


Trinity Epoch

by heli0s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes is recovering, But call it Drift Compatibility, Canon-Typical Violence, Conversations about Celebrity Worship, Crossover, Investigation of Consciousness, Multi, References to Character Death, STEVE ROGERS IS TRYING HIS BEST, Secretly a Soulmate AU, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 02:07:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23637271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: PACIFIC RIM AUAfter the 2017 death of your co-pilot, you spend two years in hiding trying to shake her memory. Outside your capsule of solace, Kaiju continue emerging at faster rates with Rangers and their personas taking over the world as saviors and celebrities. Two of the best—Steve Rogers and his co-pilot, James Barnes—are worshipped as Earth’s deliverance.You should have known better; there is no solace in a time like this. In 2019, at the height of the Jaeger program, Nick Fury finds you in South Korea. He brings you in after James Barnes loses his arm.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers & Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Reader, Steve Rogers/Reader
Comments: 86
Kudos: 220





	1. Genesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You think I would ask you if I had any other choice?” Rogers is quieter now. “Eleven drops. Eleven kills. CNN is tapping us for another interview any fucking day now and my partner is on a hospital bed unconscious. Do you think being Orion’s pilot is a hobby?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3.4k words. A “short” introduction to the narrative with glimpses into Reader’s backstory. It helps if you’ve seen Pacific Rim, but I’ve weaved information throughout to integrate the mythos.

They bring you in after James Barnes loses his arm.

It’s a startling and terrifying ordeal because Nick Fury personally lands in Red Cloud to collect you. Instinctively, you portray annoyance even though your heart feels like it could lurch right into the spinning helicopter blades on the rooftop pad. The marshal doesn’t even cut off the aircraft, only steps down in his impeccably black coat and summons you forward with two fingers.

Over the deafening sound of blades ripping through the air of Uijeongbu, army personnel watch mutely as he leans down and speaks into your ear. Your eyes widen. Your jaw ticks. You hem and haw and clench your fists, but in the end, Nicholas Fury gets what he wants. And he gets you.

-

The news of Barnes’ injury hasn’t hit yet. Not quite made its way through the enormous Hong Kong facility, and certainly not to the media. Only the doctors and technicians know, Fury informs you. No one speaks as if vocalizing it would make it true-- not that they would attempt to, anyway, with the marshal’s mouth set so grimly.

It’s a thrumming and alert kind of tension when you arrive. Eyes and ears zeroing in on your form with each step. Your heavy boots land softly, walking with careful deliberation behind the marshal, forest green jumpsuit rucked off your top half revealing an old white racerback and the corded muscles of your arms. You fix your hair, let it cover the sides of your face and neck.

Some personnel recognize you. They pause, double-take, and come to their theories slow. Those who don’t, are at least smart enough to discern something with the way you’re receiving a personal tour from Fury himself. You try to ignore it to focus on the task at hand: eating your own nerves, stomaching the truth, digesting it.

It’s all metal and rust in the Shatterdome. Heavy vault doors, concrete flooring, iron pipes. The entire thing smells like copper and the slight lingering dampness of a shower nearly aired out. The longer you walk, the more your apprehension grows. The war inside your head rages, desperate for some relief. Maybe he’ll give the tour later and simply show you to your quarters now, allowing a few hours to decompress.

Your suspicion grows the longer he marches. Past the dining hall. Past the training rooms, past the hangar, laboratories, operation quarters and finally when he ignores your protests past the living area, your entire throat feels collapsed as you realize his intention.

“You lied to me,” you accuse.

“I never lied.”

“You said I had choices. The omission of a lie doesn’t excuse the lie.”

“You still have choices—and watch your tone.” He’s entirely collected, fixing the cuffs of his sleeves.

A puff of angry, hot air escapes your mouth, boots stepping a bit harder now, louder, simmering with a wound of betrayal and your own disappointment at yourself. _Moron_ , you think. _Should have known better. Should have turned and ran out of South Korea._

When Fury arrived at Red Cloud, the stipulation—the _blackmail_ —for your compliance had nothing to do with _this_. Barnes was a side comment, a shock-value admission to keep you in place.

You’ve realized your mistake too late.

Nurses give the marshal filial nods when he steps by them. Doctors make way down the hall for him, their coats licking grey walls when they press themselves flat. The last room on the left hangs a crooked number 19 next to a metal holder. A nondescript manila file is slotted inside, the name _Barnes_ peeking out on its tab.

You know Barnes’ partner is here too, not physically amputated, but shredded all the same.

Fury gives you precisely two seconds to quash your emotions before he shoves the door open and Steve Rogers is staring at you in the face. 

“Marshal,” Rogers greets formally, jaw clamped tight. He looks back to his partner, immobile on the clinically white and blue bed, tucked in safely under paper thin sheets.

Barnes’ eyes are closed. He’s sedated and hooked up. The monitors dully beep, assuring his well-being, but the thick gauze bandage wrapped tightly around his severed limb displays early splotches of red seeping through. Although you’d been told, and although you saw Seigehook tear off Orion’s left arm to reach inside the crackling cavity where its pilots were exposed, it’s still a staggering truth to be facing now.

The wound is higher than you thought. Precisely amputated at the joint of his left shoulder and bicep and Rogers’ mirroring left side seems displaced, too.

That’s how it works.

The Handshake. The Drift. The Union.

You know that when Barnes’ body heals his shoulder, he’ll still feel its trace. And it won’t matter how much time will pass— Rogers will feel it too.

“Three days,” he announces hoarsely, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his knees. He looks over to your uneasy face blankly. “Singapore.”

You know; you saw the news.

Red Cloud doesn’t halt for anything, regardless of its tiny size nestled in South Korea, but the battle between Orion Bravo and Seigehook shuddered the base into brief pockets of immobility.

It was dinnertime when the Category III Kaiju broke water toward Malaysia where Orion was already waiting, air-lifted hours ago between the first few tremors.

Orion Bravo is a Mark-3 thing of beauty. Navy-painted and melting into the deep sapphire of the Natuna Sea, it loomed like an obelisk, broad-shouldered and more heavyweight than other Jaegers of its kind. Along with being equipped to the teeth with an arsenal of firepower, Orion’s right arm brandishes a pronounced plate of armor that handles like both a shield and a weapon. Defense one minute, offense the next.

Around it’s sharp border is a burning hot plasma trim, fifty yards thick, Stark-made, and used to slice and cauterize upon immediate contact.

Seigehook seemed overwhelmed. Its tough skin parried the punches but split open under the sizzling edge of Orion’s right arm, cracked through to the bone, immediately sealing shut and sparing the Natuna of toxic Kaiju Blue. 

Kaiju combat averages at two hours and most take much longer. Orion Bravo has always been efficient; one hour in and the fight looked finished.

The hall cheered, Barnes and Rogers chanted for as Orion lifted Seigehook’s thrashing body overhead. The arms reeled back, feet planted into the ocean floor, but when the arc of Orion’s throw reached midway, Seigehook’s tail, which had been the same as the rest of its body— thick and smooth— protruded a viciously sharp barb that fastened itself inside the hinges of Orion’s left side.

Kaijus and Jaegers move slowly in the way that time pretends to. They’re all enormous, all colossal, all sized in the way that when you’re looking closely, their hands—long and short—barely seem to be going anywhere.

The camera was at least a mile away. Safe and sound. Distant enough to perceive time and motion at a rate truer to reality.

It was a shock.

The hook, which Seigehook would soon be baptized after, ripped a line through Orion’s left arm from mid bicep to shoulder. Seigehook was still thrown, albeit lopsidedly, and landed with a tremendous crash, water jetting into the air in a wall of white spray, the criminal tail like a single blade protruding.

The change came after. Grappling. Stabbing. Orion’s deployed rockets exploding up Kaiju flank. Red Cloud was silent like a grave as the battle lasted another sixty-five fucking eternal minutes. Everyone stopped eating. No one breathed. It was an astonishment of the worst kind.

A damaged left arm shouldn’t have set Orion so far back—not a Jaeger that was more myth than reality. Its name, its celebrity, its colossal reputation stood on its own fucking very capable shoulders.

A Mark-3thing of beauty and immense prowess handled by the two most capable pilots in the entire world. Ten drops. Ten kills. Orion Bravo tore through its first drop in 2016 at the southern tip of the China Sea in a record-setting ninety-five minutes and then sped off to rack up Kaiju deaths again and again. Even when teamed up with other Jaegers, it was always obvious which pair was in command.

Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes. No other set of co-pilots dare entertains the idea of matching their ability. Among the top ten most influential people in the world according to TIME— Rogers and Barnes made the list higher than most world leaders. They were saviors. They were rockstars. Every decent magazine on a store shelf had at least one interview. GQ photoshoots and spreads. Their own action figures. Supermodel girlfriends.

Red carpet killers.

So when Rogers looks at you again, jaw set firmly, eyes cutting, your own breath feels like it might shrivel and die.

His usual sunny All-American demeanor— Irish ancestry, Brooklyn childhood, Army background; his sharp aquiline nose; his striking cerulean eyes, handsome and bright—has been replaced by a man on the thin edge of bursting apart. He’s bludgeoned sore around his cheek, blue and sallow in the hollows of his eyes. His enormous frame is hunched over and startlingly small by the bedside.

“No,” you say. There’s a million and a half things you want to say next, but you settle for something abridged. “It’s not going to _work_.”

“It will.” There’s a resolute bark in Rogers’ voice that makes you bristle. “It must.”

The marshal, having been silent, looks from you to him and takes a slow blink, no longer feeling the need to mediate. “I’ll leave it to you, then.” He tips his head, expression unreadable other than a pointed exasperation he doesn’t try to hide.

“When you’re done here, go to bed. Nurses’ll be in and out—and Rogers,” he pauses by the handle of the door, “I mean it. Go to bed.”

Fury leaves the entrance slightly ajar, as if to remind the both of you of his request. It’s a command, too, to keep your voices down unless you want the entire wing to hear this conversation.

“Why me?” You ask, bewildered, “There are hundreds of trainees, you can scout from every graduating class for another co-pilot.”

“I already know you’re compatible. I know you from the Academy.”

You scoff in disbelief. Sure, Rogers technically knows you—the years at Kodiak Island slightly overlapped, and he was there for a couple of months at the start of yours. You recalled that even back then, Steve Rogers was already destined for greatness. He was a Ranger in charge of his own combat training classes as Fightmaster. A bruiser with the kind of agility all other fighters envied and a natural born leader only weeks away from slipping into that coveted role as Pilot.

But you’ve never spoken to each other. And because he’s not allowed to equate you to those brief hallway glimpses— because that’s absolutely not enough to ascertain if someone is drift _fucking_ compatible, you snap.

“So what?!”

He stands unflinchingly. He opens his mouth before closing it again, the tip of his tongue briefly pressing behind his front teeth, and the beginning of her nickname hovers over your throat like a sniper’s red dot.

“And I know Nat.”

 _Knew_ her, you think suddenly, bitterly, as your entire body seizes. Your stomach twists. Your skin breaks out into a sheen layer of sweat. A deer in the headlights, you’re frozen in the glaring brights of his eyes.

“So,” he grits out, “I know you.”

 _That’s not how it works_ , you want to scream. _Don’t call her that_ , you want to scream. You feel a multitude of emotions. Your head spins with them. Resentment, frustration, confusion, helplessness. Guilt. Fuck, the _guilt_.

Instead of screaming, you change course, bite down, and look at the softly breathing body, chest rising and falling beneath crinkled sheets. Rogers’ own Natasha- the closest person that a pilot can get to- he’s there, still alive.

Even if you agree, even if it could happen, like hell James Barnes is going to wake up and be copacetic with a stranger stepping into _his_ Jaeger, locked in the rig next to _his_ partner.

As if reading your thoughts, Rogers’ voice breaks the silence.

“Did Fury show you the war clock?”

“What?”

“In the entrance bay—enormous metal flaps keeping time down to the second. Resets after every Kaiju attack. Did he show you or not?”

He stands up and takes two paces until he’s towering over you, blocking the yellow light casting ochre along dirtied walls. Your bare arms prickle, hairs standing on edge, feeling overexposed. The corner he’s walking you into is more than physical.

“It’s been reset almost every eight weeks. All over the Rim, Kaiju are emerging more frequently. They’re hitting us anywhere they can reach, and you know the damage they put out, don’t you?”

The question punches you in the gut. Your eyes shoot toward the bed again. Rogers is already there in reply.

“Even if Buck gets a prosthetic, it will take more than eight weeks for him to get used to it and… to return to form.”

“You can’t replace a pilot like a pair of shoes—” you hiss, “He’s not—"

“You think he’s a pair of _shoes_ to me?”

Your back bumps the wall and you immediately regret your words. Steven Grant Rogers is 6 feet on a normal day and looks well over 8 when he’s pissed off.

All his impossibly white smiles on T.V., his natural grace and poise, his effortless perfection even after the carnage of a kill— gone. Here stands a man at the end of his rope. A man you’d never want to meet in a dark alley.

He engulfs the room with his mass before desperation flickers through his eyes like a spark.

“You think I would ask you if I had any other choice?” His voice drops. Low and harsh but always controlled. “Eleven drops. Eleven kills. CNN is tapping us for another interview any fucking day now and my partner is on a hospital bed unconscious. Do you think being Orion’s pilot is a hobby?”

He doesn’t say that he’s just any Jaeger’s pilot. He’s _Orion_ ’s. You’ve always known recognition comes as a double-edged sword, and this one seems to be the sharpest.

“The world owes me,” Rogers admits, “and it _owns_ me.”

Natasha used to prattle something similar, except the words and sentiment were jumbled up worse. She’d whisper it after a fight, one of those intense stare-downs the two of you would have with each other, a handful of words exchanged because after years of sharing one fused brain, neither of you found it necessary to shout. It always ended the same—her breaking the silence with determination—a decisive pain: _I owe it to them_.

She always felt like she needed to earn redemption for one thing or another, even after the limelight found her and she bathed in it like it could save her from her demons—she always owed the world her entire life. 

Well, she got what she wanted in the end.

“So what?” You spit bitterly, masking her memory behind a snarl, “I don’t care what owns you. Duty, fame, guilt, not my fucking problem.”

“It’s precisely your fucking problem.” His voice is sardonic, mouth going sideways in a humorless smirk. “You think Fury hasn’t kept his eye on you for the last two years? It’s his only eye—he’s gotta make it count.”

You’re at a loss for words. Yes, you figured the Corps would keep tabs but how much could they care about one wayward pilot when the Apocalypse is looming?

Apparently more than you thought because Rogers starts listing off all your previous locations after California. He plows through the first three cities and dates like it’s his grocery list. More than enough to make his point.

Distant footsteps force his voice to halt, and he waits for it to pass, glancing toward the direction as if he could see through the cinderblock walls. When he looks back at you, his expression is severe.

“You drop off the face of the Earth then pop in and out of cities for two years. Fake identities. Fake credentials. But you can’t settle, can you? That’s guilt being your fucking problem.”

If you were Amanda Larsson-Davies or some other WASP-y interviewer from The New York Times behind a tape recorder you’d be counting your vacation days and planning a nice long trip because this is the exact kind of footage that would get an interviewer the promotion of a lifetime.

Earth’s Greatest Defender, a hero amongst heroes squaring up against you, demolishing a carefully crafted cult of personality with verbal terrorism. If your stomach didn’t feel like shreds, you’d probably take a second to applaud him; he’s doing a great job. The barrage doesn’t let up. He’s vicious.

“You’ve done worse than ruin her memory; you erased her. Nobody remembers Natasha Romanoff because you ran.”

“Fuck you.”

It’s a comment much too loud and irate to be next to an open door but neither of you care anymore.

“Fucking fuck _you_.” You say again, unbothered by the redundancy or immaturity. He wants to be in your head? You’ll give him a taste of it.

Rogers ignores your outburst, a new storm swirling behind his eyes.

“Fury gave you a few choices in Red Cloud because I asked him to. A ruse to lure you out, threaten you with exposing that fake degree, get you to go legit in Hong Kong.”

He’s still 8 feet tall. Brown leather jacket, torn and timeworn shirt with an old bloodstain, jeans haphazardly rolled above his boots. He steps until you can feel the heat roll of his body, searing your crawling skin with goosebumps.

“From where I’m standing, you got two choices: you can either stay in Hong Kong as another faceless Shatterdome personnel, wasting a life you could have— a significant life, a worthy life— because you’re afraid. Or you can stop being a coward, honor her memory, and get the hell on board.”

The monitors behind his broad back continue to beep languidly. The perfect audience, keeping a measured rhythm in time to your shallow, panting breaths. Your brow furrows and your hands shake. Steven Grant Rogers, unyielding in his ability, his talent for saving the world time and time again, looks like he could tear you apart with his teeth.

Now in front of your very trembling eyes, you see exactly why Orion Bravo’s record stands so tall.

He’s a thing of inexorable force. A fighter to his bitter end.

“Six drops. Six kills. You have a good track record and I know you’re capable. You walked Decima Red into Anchorage on your own despite the neural load of solo piloting. That’s not something just anybody can do. Probably not even Nat.”

Your fists clench at the thought finally rising to the front of your mind. You’d made a habit of smothering the past for so long it became easy. Now here he is, invoking her ghost and all at once the rush of adrenaline squeezes your heart to near bursting.

The war in your head rushes to the topmost peak of violence as all climatic battles do.

“She gave her life for the cause. The world needed her and she showed up every time. How about you?”

You shakily look from his penetrating gaze to the profile of his partner, restful and idyllic. Then, you look to the bandages turning wetter and wetter, redder and redder. Flaming bright like Natasha’s hair after the helmet burst apart and she dropped into a puddle of her own blood.

If you were anyone else, maybe you’d weep. Instead, you say for the third time, “Fuck you,” and Rogers only grins.

He straightens his shoulders and takes a small step back, returning to 6 feet of solid muscle going lax.

He crosses his arms and shifts his weight to one foot, staring at you down the tall bridge of his nose. His neck is a smooth marble column, lines running to meet at his collarbones. The strength in his shoulders and arms are determined, chest expanding with sure breaths.

The world hushes and you finally emerge from the battle bloodied and in tatters, unsure if you’ve won anything. Both sides come to meet in the middle, treaties in hand.

You make the choice, hands quivering all the while.

In the end, it’s not Nick Fury who gets what he wants. It’s Steve Rogers. And he gets you.


	2. Solipsis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rogers isn’t stupid. Quite the opposite, he’s incredibly perceptive and remarkably intelligent.
> 
> It doesn’t matter how you feel about him or how you feel about this situation; there’s only two weeks to let it go. Both of you must relinquish every individual sentiment to each other and obey the system or else the neural handshake collapses and you’re crushed inside a Kaiju’s maw.

You wake around 0500 and flip on the light—a jaundiced splash of color that makes your skin gleam sickeningly yellow. You shake your head, rub your eyes, and try not to linger on last night’s dream.

Lashing rain. A metal shriek. Your world bursting with red.

There’s movement outside the hall—appreciated distractions to rouse you from your thoughts. Footsteps, wheels on smooth concrete, muffled alarms, all sorts of noises clanging around together in the distance. Small comforts of familiarity; you remember how these facilities work.

There’s always something to improve in a Shatterdome. Data to analyze, parts to product and repair, training to be done. From the highest to the lowest position, every single bit needs to run tirelessly like a well-oiled machine.

You will need to, as well. The war clock demands it.

* * *

You have a maximum of two months to be combat-ready, but you’re not pitching your hopes on that timeline; Kaiju have been known to emerge earlier than K-Science predicts. Rogers broke it down last night: evaluations and endurance building the first week. Sparring the next. Week three will intertwine both more intensely. Week four will be when you face him in front of Fury in the Kwoon Room—prove yourself well-suited to be his co-pilot.

And you had argued _shouldn’t we do that earlier? If we’re already not compatible, why waste anyone’s time?_

_What would waste my time is you fighting me when you’re not ready and throwing the match. You agreed to this, so start acting like it_.

Out of all the rattling noises you can hear, his phantom voice rings the loudest.

_Drift compatibility doesn’t happen for just any Dick and Jane, and you’re betting on that—but let me tell you again, we’re compatible. Got it?_

Fine. Fine. Fine. You’ll keep your thoughts to yourself, but they’re bitter thoughts, truths that he isn’t keen on facing. No, compatibility doesn’t happen for any Dick and Jane. It doesn’t happen much at all.

Most co-pilots are related or coupled for a reason. The potential for alignment is higher with these pairs because they’ve already established a personal connection and know how one another work. There’s history, trust, and something _more_. Something deep and intrinsic. Something that binds you until you die.

You used to joke that you and Natasha got lucky finding each other at Kodiak. Two misplaced orphans finally given a home in the shape of Decima Red’s Conn-Pod. It was metal and cold, but it was home, even if it was too brief.

Three minutes after waking and the dread has already settled in your gut like debris floating to the bottom of a lake _—_ another layer on top of all that old sludge inside your body but there’s no time to ponder it. You have precisely one hour after breakfast to let your food settle before Rogers joins you in the Combat Room. You brush your teeth and dress.

-

“Again.”

His voice cracks through the quiet space. Fury’s closed it down for today, keeping the session private. The staff in his right hand hovers above your shoulder before it retreats. From behind a wet curl of hair, you glare.

It’s 2015 and you’re back in Kodiak Island. Except this time, instead of sparring with Nat, Steve Rogers is there in all his effortless glory. Clean-shaven, jaw set, stoic, not a single hair out of place. Ruthless.

And it’s not like you’ve been slacking these past two years; you’ve been on army bases, worked on construction sites, did a short stint in security. You’re in shape and you remember how to fight.

But he is _ruthless_.

1300 and you’ve been whacked in the head, chest, thighs, ankles, back, and up and down both arms. You’ve gotten a few on him. Some good, most laughable. Only six more hours to go and you’re not sure if there will be lunch in-between.

At this point, you’re too tired to think about your burdensome conscience. Too tired to feel anything but _tired_. It’s a purposeful tactic from him because the less capable you are to think, the less you’ll worry, and the less you’ll feel inclined to dive into Victoria Harbor and swim yourself away.

“Is this your idea of a partnership?” You snarl when your side contracts in agony, an ache burrowing beneath your soaked shirt. You grasp the staff firmly, ignoring way the muscles of your wrists beg you to stop.

“This is my idea of an evaluation. Focus.” He says it calmly, like you’re supposed to be grateful. “You’ll be better for it tomorrow. In a month, you won’t even recognize yourself.”

Well, you’re _not_ grateful. 

“I’d rather not recognize _you_.”

His grip falters, features flashing amusement at your comment.

You momentarily ponder a few things: the pros and cons being insolent again on the second day when he’s liberally kicking your ass; that the last memorable thing you said to Steve Rogers was _fuck you_ three times in a row; and suddenly, the way he looks with the corner of his mouth turned upward, lips slanting.

Moment over. You take the opening and the tip of your staff stops half an inch from his Adam’s apple, letting it bob up and down. Then, you press it gently to his throat. His lips part, jaw sliding forward incrementally with attitude and another emotion you can’t place.

“I’m hungry,” you assert.

He stops breathing and closes his mouth. When he opens it again, he takes a shallow breath and says, “Alright.”

Taking advantage of your surprise, he immediately seizes the same opportunity you took. His staff pushes against the side of your neck, the cool, smooth wood landing on the slope connecting to your shoulder. The slant of his mouth grows an inch wider. You gulp at the crescent shape of his eyes, bright with mirth.

“Hit the showers,” he says, passive again, “You have one hour for lunch.”

-

No such luck. Not even twenty minutes pass before someone else fucks up your day.

Across the table, a man sits down with his tray, smile wide and handsome. He’s been watching you from the corner of his eye for a few minutes now, probably wondering if he should come over. Other residents of the Shatterdome have been equally inquisitive, but none as bold.

“Saw you go into the fight room with the big guy. I’m surprised you’re alive.” His head tilts forward as he inspects you playfully, “I’m Sam Wilson.”

You remember your manners, no matter how exhausted you are, and extend your hand, “Good to meet you, Sam Wilson, but I’m not sure about being alive yet.”

An understanding laugh, “Can’t help noticing you’re new. Steve training you for something?”

You shrug, sidestepping his inquiry, “You a pilot?”

Sam Wilson is polite enough to follow your path. “Yeah. Avis Dominion—the flyest girl in the game—that’s me and Riley.”

You know of Avis Dominion. Maroon and silver, propulsion rockets attached to her ankles. She doesn’t fly, of course, but she’s lithe and graceful, the jets giving her quick bursts of speed. Avis has particle dispersal cannons on her back, firing plasma charged ion rails to wound and cauterize. She’s simple incredible, and Sam is beaming at your expression expectantly.

“Think I’ve heard of her,” you respond, lightened by his humor.

Suddenly, a pair of heavy bootsteps pulls your attention sideways. Not even twenty minutes and Rogers is marching forward, hands clenched in fists by his side, mouth pressed into a worried and thin line. Wilson doesn’t even have the chance to greet him before Rogers stops by your hunched-over form.

“He’s up.”

And the partly chewed bite in your mouth threatens to turn sour.

_He’s up_ means _he wants to talk to you_. And you couldn’t have avoided it forever, but you fantasized that meeting James Barnes might be put off indefinitely.

He’d been in and out of consciousness since last night, lucid enough to speak and question his state, enough to raise hell when he looked down at his left side, and certainly enough to thrash himself open and bloody and needing to be sedated again.

You run your hand through your hair, grip it tightly for a second out of frustration, and finally rise. You’re an eloquent orator in a pinch, so, you groan.

“Fucking fuck me.”

-

Back at the table, Steve’s attention never leaves the way you uncomfortably walk down the hall. To his left, Sam’s leg bounces impatiently because Bucky’s injury still hasn’t been announced and CNN has called the facility every six hours since they landed post-battle. Everyone has questions and suspicions, and Sam’s last three minutes of snooping wasn’t enough to glean a clear answer.

“Steve, man— _what_ is going on?”

Steve looks gravely back at Sam, watchfully inspecting his expression as he admits, “That was Decima Red’s former pilot.”

A beat passes. Sam blinks once, then twice, and then his eyes fly open.

“Decim— _shit_ — Anchorage 2017? Natasha Romanoff?” Sam clamps his mouth shut, at a loss for words, outraged and impressed all at once.

Decima Red’s story is one of those tales Rangers pass around a campfire—or in their case, a boiler room. Natasha Romanoff was a stiletto dagger— elegant and lethal and blood red. She would show up to events like a goddess, always stunning and magnetic and she never took a bad picture. Sam met her once, at some award show where he had too much champagne and Riley asked him to kindly stop drooling on the pretty lady.

He’s never met her co-pilot until now and he’s not sure if anyone outside The Icebox has. Romanoff would laugh it off when reporters would ask. She’d say her partner’s camera shy and doesn’t like crowds. Then her long lashes would flutter, her sly smile glittering like diamonds, and men would drop like Kaiju in the ocean.

She was extraordinarily skilled _and_ beautiful.

So when Decima Red washed up as a devastated heap on Anchorage’s shore with only one pilot, no one thought it would be her partner who survived. Romanoff handled the right side, after all. The dominant one. The stronger one.

Sam shakes his head, “Steve, what the hell are you up to? Where the hell did you find her? How--”

The slew of queries slowly tapers out as Sam lights up in understanding. But it’s a joyless light and he shakes his head again, “You’re recruiting her. She’s replacing Barnes.”

“Yeah,” Steve frowns deeply. The truth always sounds worse from an outsider’s point of view but he didn’t expect much else because it sounds bad in his head, too.

“He’s gonna hate her,” Sam mutters, cracking a joke because if Steve’s had to bring in a new Ranger, it means that Bucky’s more hurt than they’d thought. And the two of them? Closest co-pilots he’s ever had the pleasure to meet.

Their drift was immaculate. Absolutely seamless. As if they were brothers—as if they were _twins_. And that’s not even – look, Sam Wilson knows some twins. There’s a pair here in Hong Kong and even their connection is nothing like Steve and Bucky’s.

From the moment they step into their drivesuits to the very last blow they land in combat, you’d think they were one single person spliced into two like a damn science fiction novel. The simple sight of Rogers and Barnes _walking_ into the Jaeger bay was uncanny and nearly an act of God. They moved the same. They _breathed_ the same.

Sam knows what happened to Bucky, and what Steve must do in its aftermath, must be _killing_ him.

-

James Barnes is upright in bed, sheets around his waist, right fist over his thigh. He hasn’t said anything or even looked at you yet and in the strained silence, you find yourself absurdly craving the fight room. At least you know what to expect in there.

Outside of his Ranger biography—which is public knowledge—you know nothing about him. Barnes is reserved on T.V. and in interviews. Having grown up with his co-pilot, their biographies are eerily similar, and so he rarely slips out from Rogers’ shadow and is rarely anything more than stoic. He smiles for the camera, sure—real big and pretty—but never quite true.

It unsettles you. Here sits some kind of modern-day Achilles, heel pierced and torn through-- still more powerful than you.

You shift your weight from one foot to the other when his eyes flicker over to your boots before darting to your face, a quiet breath leaves him. His left shoulder jerks and you look away, tense and apprehensive, not wanting to stare.

A few curious seconds pass before his right hand shakily rises to run through his hair. His fingers tremble as he pinches dark strands, jaw ticking, and you realize James Barnes just had that moment— _that_ moment—when he catches himself trying to use his left arm.

There will be many more of those.

“Jesus...” he mutters, breaking reticence with a venomous hiss, “Fuck!”

Your tired body takes the impact of his words like a car crash. The fight has fled your heart at the sight of him and you’re left regurgitating all those jumbled-up-worse words every Jaeger pilot does sooner or later:

You owe a debt. You need it paid. He can’t take it personally. This is neither about you nor him.

“Look,” you say apologetically, “I didn’t— this wasn’t my idea.”

“I know that,” Barnes retorts, scrubbing his face with the heel of his palm, the skin of it scratching against his chin and jaw. He’s grown a bit of stubble, his usual smoothness replaced by a grey-green shadow. He props himself up with his right arm, legs swinging over the edge of the bed.

“Maybe you don’t think you can do this,” he snorts derisively, “But you better.”

His line of sight is fixed on the floor, right arm flexing with the pressure he exerts on the poor mattress and you watch the way his muscles ripple up into the shade of his sleeve. When he turns to you after a deep breath, his face—sharp cheeks and dignified brow; tall, straight nose bridge; strong jaw and his distinctly wide lips—is fatal.

“Personally, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about who gets into the robot as long as when your fucking feet hit the rig, you’re one-hundred-percent in.”

Barnes’ eyes are piercingly blue. They’re reflective like frosted gunmetal. Cold. Hard. He bares his teeth.

“If there is even one tiny bit of you that doesn’t believe you can, and in the middle of the drift you chase that rabbit, and you get him killed?” His mouth is a wide and devastating slant. “I will dig your corpse out of the Pacific Ocean--”

The door slams open with a crash. Rogers barrels inside with a cafeteria tray of food in hand. They stare at each other before Barnes shoots him an annoyed look and suddenly the threat from only seconds ago disappears with a blink of his silver-blue irises.

“You ruined my moment, Steve.” He states plainly, grabbing at the tray. Barnes gives you a look— half of an amused quirk, tongue flicking at the point of his canines— and then tucks into the meal, moving the platter with his knee. You’re staggered.

It’s silent other than the sound of his chewing, rhythmic and carefree. He even folds a square bit of napkin inside the neck of his shirt to catch crumbs and you’re helplessly trying to reconcile that this is the same person who just promised you he’d find your dead body 10 thousand miles underwater.

The more time passes between his verbal gutting and his cheerful eating, the more your sympathy rots.

A pop of his blue Jello container opening and you snap like a rubber band.

“You know I _just_ fucking got here, right? You—” your finger jabs accusingly at Rogers, “kicked my ass all day, and _you_ —” your finger turns to Barnes, who stops slurping midway, “—sorry about your arm, that’s not my fucking fault—"

“Hey—” Rogers warns, stepping forward, hand out to derail the impending shouting match.

“No. Fuck you, Rogers.” He stumbles back with the force of your two-handed push on his chest, stunned at how quickly you leapt from the wall, “I agreed to it already, assholes. Maybe it’ll help your cause a little to _not_ keep pissing off the other half of the fucking robot.”

And because you’re both incensed and starved from having lunch interrupted, you yank Barnes’ Jello from his shocked-slax grip and shake it into your mouth. A loud crinkle fills the otherwise silent room when you fiercely throw it into the trash bin and stomp off.

All the atmosphere gets eaten up by your temper. It’s silent like a black hole, nothing but the receding clomps of your irritation in the distance.

Bucky waits for your footsteps to pass before he begins to laugh, bright and astounded, quick puffs of air passing over his lips. He looks at his hand, still out in front of his chest, fingers curled around nothing. He looks at the trash bin by the door, plastic liner crumpled inward with the force of your arm.

He looks at Steve, standing with his hands uselessly by his side, an array of emotions passing over his face. He’d been calm—really, really calm—kept it pushed down and pacified, but it’s just the two of them now, and Steve looks like he could cry when he sees Bucky’s shoulder. He looks like he could level the Shatterdome.

“I’m fine.” Bucky says, rolling his eyes dramatically, humor gone. “Quit your blubbering.” He tilts his head towards the open door, “She’s tough, like you said.”

Decima Red’s pilot, the one who brought her skeleton back to Anchorage through a storm, of course she’d be. When Steve told him— explained it to him, practically wheeled out a chalkboard so Bucky could see his whole plan—Bucky was _pissed_. He’d just lost a fucking arm, after all. And now he was losing his fucking robot. 

But he slept on it, thought about it some, knew Steve was right.

He trusted Steve. Always have, always will. Whoever Steve decided on needed to be more than just tough. Steve needed reliability. Conviction.

They needed to match that Rogers persistence. Stubborn. Smart. Torn open by guilt and walking around with the world on their shoulders as if it’s their burden alone.

Yeah. It’s perfect.

Bucky looks at the blue specks of Jello clinging to his fingertips and sighs, “You’re gonna have to break her.”

Steve nods. He knows.

-

Time blurs as routine gives way to monotony. 

Your sanity is precariously tethered to lunches and dinners between psych evals and full-body exams. In the two weeks you’ve been here, maybe there’s been _one_ rest day. You hoard what comfort you can from the time you limp from the fight room to the second your back hits the mattress to the bedside alarm blaring. 

Ephemeral relief also trickles in by way of conversations with other inhabitants of the facility.

The rest of Hong Kong’s STRIKE team take to your presence well enough **.** Co-pilots Wilson and Riley; the Maximoff twins, Wanda and Pietro; cousins from Wakanda, Erik and T’Challa; Odinson brothers, Thor and Loki.

They’re supportive and encouraging, but certainly not naïve. They keep their distance, the entire thing like a caged animal they can view, but not interact with wholly. You’re here as James Barnes’ tentative replacement, still just a prospect before anyone can entertain the idea of becoming attached to you.

Not to mention, you’re a deserter. Fucked off from the Ranger life and went off the grid. Most co-pilots died together—which was the honorable thing to do—and the rare few who are unlucky enough to survive at least come back to their Shatterdomes to continue their righteous work. You understand why they’re guarded.

Sam Wilson is the one person most willing to ignore all that, it seems. He hunts you down in the dining hall, finds you on morning runs, is kind and easy-going. He grabs an extra tray when you’re hobbling into lunch and plays basketball with you when you’re well enough to amble around the court.

He keeps you grounded with reminders: _Rogers is a hard ass, but look—past that, he’s just a dude, you know? Trying his best to keep it all together—and there’s a lot to keep. Shit… you seen this place. I couldn’t do it._

_The whole world wants to suck his dick, Wilson. You too?_

_Appreciate you, but man’s not my type. But hey, I’m just sayin’—maybe the world’s onto something._

You get a laugh, and you get to complain to at least one sympathetic ear about how Rogers seems adamant on turning you into a blood bag, or how Barnes is gleefully spectating, or how Fury is willfully ignorant. You get at least one person in your corner when Rogers yells at you for mouthing off—for fighting him in a wrong way— _again_.

You wish you were jogging the perimeter with Sam now, but this morning there’s only persistent torture.

Apparently today is, once again, exclusively about kicking your ass.

The rules are: no kicks, no punches, nothing below the waist. Traditional wrestling _only_ , which means your hands can barely get halfway around him before he takes you to the mat effortlessly. 

All morning you’ve been pinned. Shoulders and waist constantly under his palms, flipped sideways and upside down. His reach is longer. His hold is stronger.

Barnes stands against the wall, shoulder in a sling, observing with amusement. Sometimes he clicks his tongue. Other times he smirks. He walks in and out like he’s at the movies. Fucker.

You cuss when you land on the mat for the hundredth time. The wet smear of your forehead glistens when you roll over, clutching your side. You’d woken up this morning feeling alright, taking to heart some of Sam’s advice, attempting to be understanding a little more each day, but with the way this session’s going, you’re headed for a backslide.

Your legs are shaking. Too hot all over even with your pants rolled up and shirt knotted at your hip. You plant your feet stubbornly, pacing around Rogers. A touch too soon, a weave too late. He slams you on the floor.

“This is— _fuck!_ ” you scream, “—a fucking unbalanced fight, Rogers!”

“I know,” he responds from above you, a single bead of sweat collecting on his placid brow. He gets up, yanking you along, and watches you try again. 

Two seconds pass before he’s hooked you, biceps locking beneath your chest, spinning you through the air, and coming down hard on top of your back.

You’ve had it. It’s been hours of his domination and your helpless humiliation. You’re done with wrestling and done with him. Your knees and hips dig into the plastic, fury stoking the fight, fully intending on throwing him off but he shifts immediately. His chest presses into your spine, thigh flexed diagonal over both of yours.

“Don’t.” He says, shallow breaths heavy over the top of your head.

“Get off me, asshole! You’re too fucking big to wrestle with—I’m not _Barnes_!”

Rogers only grunts and bears down until you’re motionless and gasping beneath him. The air is hot, too hot. Scorching waves roll from your body, between his chest and your back, scalding with heat and embarrassment.

Your cheek drives into the plastic, burning with submission. Early stinging of pre-emptive tears prickles your eyes as frustration comes to a head, seizing your body and mind, and you feel up to your throat in despair. Anger makes you want to thrash but weakness makes you obedient. There’s nothing to be done but clench your fists and bite it back, swallow the tears, chew your lip bloody.

He is too big and too strong and too overpowering.

It was different wrestling with Natasha; you were closer in size and well-matched. It was a good recreation of what Kaiju combat may be if ranged weapons were to fail. She’d be the Kaiju, you the Jaeger. Then you’d switch. It felt like preparation.

This doesn’t. This feels like a setup for failure. This feels like a _lesson_.

And suddenly, you shut your eyes. God damn him. God damn him. God damn him.

Allowing insight to cool your temper, you stop resisting and go slack. You fists unclench, head dropping to lay on your sweat-slick forearm. You’ve figured it out. Surrender vibrates through your chest, tremors undulating to the rhythm of his breathing.

Rogers lets off some pressure and you can finally take a good breath. Slowly, he moves. His weight carries to one side of his torso, then his knees and he rocks off you, rising.

His hand splays over your shoulder blade, thumb pushing gently against the back of your neck before he hoists you up by the collarbone. It’s a delicate grasp as opposed to his previous ones. Calloused finger pads avoid the bruising on your shoulder from old hits.

Barnes looks on as his hand curls over your bicep, melting around the shape of your muscles, vice-like but merciful. The heat of your body becomes indistinguishable from his as he props you securely.

“You understand?” He asks gently, “Why it’s an unbalanced fight?”

His brow furrows, earnest blue eyes respectfully apologetic, searching yours for acknowledgement. You press your lips together tightly.

Of course you do.

He’s breaking you piece by piece until you’re malleable and pliant, willing to surrender your ego and give yourself over to a force much larger than your personal reality. You haven’t vocalized rebellion since the second day, and many days have passed, but it’s obvious how you struggle against the current.

Rogers isn’t stupid. Quite the opposite, he’s incredibly perceptive and remarkably intelligent.

It doesn’t matter how you feel about him or how you feel about this situation; there’s only two weeks to let it go. You can’t hold onto your pride, your resentment, or your reservations about any of it in the con-pod, and you can’t have one single fleeting thought about failure.

Both of you must relinquish every individual sentiment to each other and obey the system or else the neural handshake collapses and you’re crushed inside a Kaiju’s maw.

Barnes was right: you’re either one hundred percent in, or you’ll get him killed. So in today’s simulation, no, you’re not the Jaeger and Rogers isn’t the Kaiju.

He is the drift. It’s equal parts cruel and effective.

Today’s session is a reminder. When you fight the drift, it will take you down hard and fast, there’s no changing that. Only in silence will it support you, and only in silence will it keep you alive.

“Do you understand?” He says again, in a whisper. His lips are parted, turned down solemnly. “You can’t push back. Do you understand?”

Sam Wilson’s petition for Steve Rogers’ character echoes.

_He’s just a dude. Trying his best to keep it all together. And there’s a lot to keep._

You manage a nod despite the aching throb of your skull. Shame crawls up your arms, erupting beneath the clutch of Rogers’ fist. You nod. You’ve learned your lesson. Of course you understand.

-

After that, everything seem to flatten itself out. You heed Sam’s words, bitterness chipping away in the patient flow of Rogers’ direction until it becomes smooth like a time-worn pebble. You no longer fight the slipstream of your situation and rather become more mindful of his labor-- more appreciative.

You can either be a fatalist and fixate on how much you’d rather not be here, or, like he said, you can get on board.

If Barnes is a modern-day Achilles, Rogers might as well be the Hercules. Some radiant demi-god tasked with backbreaking labours in the form of beast-slaying. Unlike Hercules, he’s all mortal, burdened even worse with mortal toils.

You might as well not be yet another thing that gets him killed in the end. It’d be further hell on your conscience and Barnes would personally scalp you, anyway.

So you iron out your attitude and grow friendly, and on a Thursday morning, he shows up with his hands tucked into his pockets. Barnes is to his side, matching in posture, his new prosthetic arm gleaming black and gold.

“Ready?”

They walk in conjunction. Left foot, right foot, hips following a perfect cadence.

His blonde head turns back at you with an expectant grin, “You excited?”

A snort, “You’ve dangled it in front of me for weeks. What do you want to hear, huh?”

There’s no offense in your words, only a hint of mischief because you’ve discovered the joy taunting him brings. Amusement in the form of riling him up because he’s surprisingly easy to rile, because there’s many ways to do it, and because you’re a damn fast learner.

Steve Rogers might be athletic and quick, but he’s terrible at guarding his legs. It makes his cheeks flush when you repeatedly strike his thighs and even more so when Barnes cackles from the corner. It’s infinitely better than any entertainment you can buy.

He gets you back, though, biding his time until your jogs, then laps you twice to keep you humble. The best kinds of friendships are built off torment, besides. You’re hopeful.

“I’m not convinced you’re _excited_ ,” he sings now, stopping abruptly so that you bump into his back with a grunt of surprise.

Barnes smirks, “He gets you every time. It’s sad.” Cheeky bastards, but they pick up the pace again, threading through the hallways.

They’re finally taking you on a proper tour of the Shatterdome. Four weeks and you still need a map to get around. They’ve kept you from wandering, kept others from being your guide, kept you on your fucking toes because they’re absolute little shits.

It’s friendship.

The first stop is the enormous Jaeger hangar. 

Stretching on and back, it’s a mess of moving parts and continuous sparks. Cranes up and down, engineers and workers in constant motion. They walk you across the main bridge of the perimeter, taking leisurely steps to let you catch your dazed breath and absorb the view. 

The anticipation was clever provocation on his part, created in jest, but the sight of it now in front of you feels like a kick to the teeth. Your teasing demeanor drops like a cadaver.

The Mark-3’s are beautiful. Scratched and dented, wind-bleached in places, but all gorgeous and exclusively equipped to best fit their Rangers. Titanium cores. Angel wings. Plasma casters. Assault mount sting-blades. K-Stunner warheads. Sentry treads. The list of features running on and on and on.

Unique traits for unique pilots.

Pain strikes your heart.

Decima’s Crocus-9 reactor core was uranium powered and instead of angel wings or blades, she had extendable plasma batons. You and Natasha amputated six Kaiju with them. A 1700-ton ballerina, she was created to fit your partnership’s style— brutal but dexterous. The fight was always good in Decima—always, _always_ , good.

You’ll never have that with Orion. You’ll never have that with Rogers.

In the distance, voices shout and echo over gears and metal joints. Forklifts whirr and beep, personnel scrambling like dedicated worker ants.

Two years without Decima and Natasha. Over seven hundred days and each one felt too long, stretched, infinite, miserable. Waking up was just another twenty-four hours to bury like how you buried Nat. But now, here you stand—returned to the front of the continued Jaeger Program that’s moved on without her, and the last two years comes to crush you in a tidal wave all at once.

You feel powerless, distraughtly wishing you were back in your Jaeger. You wish you were stronger than you are _—_ wish you could take on the tidal wave.

“ _Hey_ ,” Barnes calls, urging you forward with quick strides and his perceptive, sharp eyes. “Stay with us.”

You quell the hurt and keep up.

At the end of the ramp, Tony Stark is on a crane. His face is covered by a thick iron mask and he’s welding something tiny on Orion Bravo’s left flank. Over the banging machinery and screeching blades of metal on metal, Stark yells, “Good to finally meet you, kid!”

You don’t get a chance to holler back. 

“Gotta say, Decima was one of my personal favorites,” and you flinch.

Nobody notices. Life moves on. Tony Stark does so even faster. 

“Still damn proud of her after all these years! I know exactly where she is in Oblivion Bay—if this—” he gestures vaguely to the three of you on the walkway, “—doesn’t work out, let me know and I can go get your girl. Sure, her chest’s all ripped out—” he motions to his pecs, and you recoil each time his blowtorch sizzles past, “—and I’d be breaking my back to get those pieces right— but hey, a little boob job isn’t gonna hurt anyone. If you ask me, people could use more of ‘em!”

You’re speechless. You finally meet _the_ Tony Stark—the genius mind behind every single Jaeger. His endless vat of brilliance designed them, breathed them to life, equipped and armed them, made them perfect, and— _boob job?_

“What?” You whisper, feeling your entire body drain of warmth.

Rogers tucks his chin to his chest in an attempt to hide his smile. Barnes speaks up, dismantling the silence of your shock with strategic and considerate intention. He snorts a clipped sound at Stark and says simply, “He’s on speed. Don’t listen to him.”

Life is moving on all around you in rushes of sound and color. The noises of the Jaeger hangar blare in your ears. The blues of Barnes and Rogers’ eyes flash like lighthouse beams. You feel yourself ebb and flow in the current of time, like a buoy floating toward the shore, and suddenly— strangely— you realize you’re laughing.

They share looks before grinning themselves. You wipe the corners of your eyes with a final smirk and run your hands through your hair.

-

He was right; you hardly recognize yourself. Monotony has come and pass and now you find comfort in the routine. You’re stronger, too, hitting harder and moving faster, matching his tempo and technique. You parry his every punch, slip from his grasp, deflect his force with your skill.

There’s louder talk in the Shatterdome the closer you get to proving day. Your presence no longer feels uncertain.

“Stop dicking around, Steve.”

Barnes is leaning against the wall, watching the way Rogers pads around you like a panther. Two long strides and the heavy staff comes down an inch away from your forehead. He spins it in one hand like a drumstick, kicking his legs leisurely as if you’re no threat at all.

“Point,” Barnes comments. He’s acting as judge today, another perspective on the potential of compatibility. The Kwoon Room’s got your name on it next to a time slot, the official fight scheduled for tomorrow when you’ll be proving yourself in front of a crowd.

Rogers backs up with a chuckle, goes right too carefully, and you land on his thigh in retaliation. It sounds like it hurts. A few feet away, the Maximoff twins pause their sparring to look over in amusement.

“Point.”

A huff, he hisses between his teeth at the sting. “This how you wanna play?”

A return whack on your arm rings out before you can respond- much harder than you hit him originally. The blistering contact makes your temper flare. Steve _fucking_ Rogers. Oh, you wanna _play_.

“Point. Hey, careful.”

You slap his bicep with your staff and it leaves a red welt on his skin.

“ _Watch_ it. You’re gonna mark each other up.”

He returns it to your lower back and you hit him next in the same spot. His mouth opens indignantly, but Barnes has had enough of childishness, coming up behind him and yanking the back of his head. Quick as a whip, he kicks Rogers’ knees out and picks up the weapon, aiming it at you menacingly.

His arm glimmers like a beacon of warning.

“Drop it, sweetheart.” And you grin. 

_Sweetheart_. Barnes only says it when he’s feeling fully annoyed, which, both you and Rogers are particularly good at making him. If drift compatibility could be determined by how much two people can piss off another one, Orion would be looking at a new pilot right the fuck now.

You put both hands up in the air in mock surrender and he rolls your staff away with his foot. Rogers is on his back, chuckling and rubbing the back of his knees.

“Isn’t it obvious the two of you are suited?” Wanda speaks up from the corner.

Pietro stands by her side, fists wrapped in bandages on his hips. “ _Three_ of you, truly.”

“It’s just formality,” Rogers replies to Wanda, “Fury wants what he wants.”

“What Fury wants is for the two of you to get in the robot.”

From the shadows, because he’s a dramatic son of a bitch, the marshal steps forward. You immediately fix your posture, pulling Rogers up by the hand until he stretches himself tall next to you.

“I’ve seen what I needed to see.” The marshal looks you up and down, standing stiffly next to your awaiting co-pilot. “An estimated three weeks before the next breach and time is of the essence, Rangers.” He pulls his wrist from his sleeve and taps on the leather watch rhythmically, not bothering to give any of you another glance as he sweeps himself from the room.

“Hangar. Suit up five minutes ago.”

In his wake, your harried expression says it all: _I’m not ready—I don’t think can._ Your eyes frantically find them, emotions spiraling out of control, panicked and shaken. There is a logic to formality—you’re still working yourself up for the fight. You were supposed to have more time to prepare for the next part.

But you’re being thrown into the cockpit _now_.

They compose themselves for your sake, all hints of levity gone. There’s determination and severity in their expressions.

In unison, because they know each other in ways you don’t yet, because they’ve been in each other’s heads, two pairs of controlled blue reply: _You can. You must._

-

Rogers stares at your chin in the Drivesuit room, both stripped down to your underwear. His muscles are sweat-slick, dappled rose with exertion as the two of you shove your limbs into new skin until you’re encased in black circuitry. Technicians zip the first layer up, then retreat to other cabinets with haste.

Your hands are balled into fists, mouth set grimly as you fight the urge to scream or crumble. It’s been two years since you’ve been in battle armor. Even worse, it’s been two years since you’ve been in someone else’s head.

The polycarbonate shell gets snapped on by four different hands. The spinal clamp sinks its hooks in. 

He steps forward, geared up in matching polished white. The technicians nod and leave the two of you to privacy knowing that in just a few moments there will be none left; the entire hangar will be an audience.

“Hey,” he calls, voice low and rigid, “You’ve done this before—you know how it works. It’s just a test run. No rabbits. No modesty reflex. Got it?”

The biggest setback to the neural handshake—besides chasing rabbits—mistakes made by rookies and greener Rangers, are what PPDC psychologists call the “modesty reflex”. It’s the instinctive shielding of personal information during a drift, cluttering your thoughts with barriers to keep someone out, and the exact thing that will shut down any chance of alignment. Simply put, it’s about sex.

“You just eye-fucked me in there. I think we’re past modesty.” A useless attempt at a joke to soothe your rattled mind. Sex is the lowest on the totem pole of things you give a fuck about in the drift. There’s nothing Rogers could learn about you that he likely hasn’t ever thought or experienced for himself. You’re both adults. Sex is merely biology.

He takes the helmets off their stands, holding one to you. Your fingers curl underneath and press tightly into the molding to keep themselves from shaking.

“It’s Tasha,” you whisper with a tremble, “I’ll find her in the drift. And—”

The admission makes him swallow, thick and nervous. You mean to say, _and you’ll find Barnes_.

It’s a trauma that’s been seared into his brain—a cruel truth to air—but it’s true all the same. The worry is that once you see Nat, he’ll see Barnes, and you’re afraid that after all this time avoiding her memory, you won’t be able to let her go again. Your weakness will dislodge his focus, ruin the drift, tear apart the alignment. Tear yourself apart along with it.

You’re afraid.

He’s still holding onto the other side of your helmet. His grip is tighter and firmer, and it keeps you steady enough.

“You can’t chase her,” he urges, “But if you do, I’ll come find you.”

He sounds sure, and you nod for both your sakes.

-

A hundred people stand in wait, hands on their hips in anticipation as Steve enters the cockpit with you by his side. Sparse clapping begins behind the glass. Engineers, flight crew, technicians, Rangers. Bucky is next to the LOCCENT officer, Shuri, at her monitors, watching electrical impulse levels rise and fall.

He’s spent all month with you, mentoring in some ways, giving space in others. He meant it on that god-awful hospital bed—get Steve killed and Bucky’s wrath would move heaven and earth to wreak vengeance. Steven Grant Rogers, his whole life being Bucky’s responsibility, now placed into two hands that are _not_ his.

He looks at his left arm, the Stark-made prosthetic leering up at him like an excruciating reminder. Not his. Not his. He looks to the blue screen, projecting lines of data. Two bodies slowly arranging into one. One similar, one— _not his_.

He wants to trust you. He’s learning to trust you. Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth.

-

The rig locks in place. Feet, shoulders, arms, backs. It’s comforting and jarring, facing the flickering projections of the heads-up display, seeing the skeleton of Orion Bravo so similar yet so alien from Decima’s. You don’t dare look to your right, don’t dare think about Nat’s face over his.

You miss her, god damn it, you _miss_ her. A panicked breath. A low, quiet, whine you hardly register as yourself.

Shuri’s voice comes over the speaker. Her usual cheery tone has been replaced with firmer speech, all business, “Orion, are you ready?”

Rogers mouths _calm down_ and punches the corresponding buttons. He gives you a nod and you return it in good faith. _Calm down._

“Initiating Neural Handshake in three—” Shuri activates the system, “—two—” Electricity shoots up your spinal column.

The first rip of immersion is searing hot and freezing cold at the same time. You try to remind yourself you’ve done this before; it’s been done— _yes—_ and it’s been done well.

_Trust the drift. The drift is silence._

Your thoughts subdue as the first tendrils of Steve’s consciousness bleed into yours in the form of red-bricked alleyway and summertime. There’s a sweet breeze rushing over your face before time slows. The seconds stretch into years.

A silver bicycle. His feet on the metal pegs. Barnes, plump-faced and pink-nosed from sunshine, grinning and whooping. Seven and eight. On top off the world.“—two—“

Past and present cease to exist. You’re in the sun, too. They’re older now. Thirteen, fourteen. Bruised from street fighting, sharing popsicles as both a treat and an icepack.

All at once, it comes. Art school. Army. Academy. Graduation. First drift. First drop. Barnes by his side every step of the way. They laugh. They cry. Flashes too highspeed to be wholly memory, but you feel it soaking every nerve and flooding your brain. You feel it like intuition. It burns. It chills. It’s gone. “—two—”

His hands become your hands. His body, your body. He’s swimming in your every thought. A flash of crimson streaks through your line of vision. You impulsively turn to face it. “—one—”

_Hey! Let it go._ It’s your voice and his voice blended. You listen, flinching at the abrupt sound, knee-jerk reactions firing off, fear beginning to chew at the center of your brain, spreading out slow and thick.

_Don’t chase the rabbit._ “—one—”

A figure appears at your side, tall and quiet. He’s half torn open, red like Nat, with big, ghostly irises peering down and you hear yourself calling his name:

Bucky?

_Don’t!_ Steve demands, _don’t look, please. I can’t— I can’t either._ You quiet your pounding heart at his pleading, forcing the image from your mind.

_Trust the drift_.

Steve continues to sink in like a palm running from the edge of your temple to the back of your skull, tugging your head toward the blue sky of his eyes. It feels like his hand— it feels like your hand. Your body lifts, weightless, secured only by a single hold. He’s everywhere, inside your muscles, your pulse, your heartbeat, like he’s been a part of you your entire life. Like the way Natasha used to feel. He’s vivid and alive, thoroughly oven through.

_Okay?_

The two of you look each other without looking at each other. A nod of his head— your head— vaguely registered as real movements.

Shuri returns both of you to time’s fixed pace. Her voice lifts the trance.

“—Neural Handshake complete.”

Steve’s right arm moves forward. Yours continues the motion. Orion brandishes its shield in salute.

The drift it silent, but the entire facility has erupted into cheers.

-

“Yes! It’s good!” Shuri exclaims from her seat. A loud exhale followed by victorious punches at the air and she can’t help grinning so big her face begins to ache.

She looks over at Bucky, standing with a smile, both proud and pained. She places a gentle palm on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he says, calmly, eyes still shut. “It’s good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! This was a *huge* chapter! Please let me know what you think. Also, do yourself a favor and look up a video of Greco-Roman wrestling and imagine Steve Rogers owning your ass jadslfjasdlfj.


	3. Paralysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry,” you sob, locked around Bucky’s bicep, his forearm, fingers digging into the smooth obsidian plates, fisting the fabric of his sleeve. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” As if he were Natasha—as if you could stop both her death and his mangling, or at least hold her the way you are holding him now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Language, robots vs. monsters violence, big-time angst, smutty bits (dry-humping, thigh riding). 9.9k words. I am so sorry.

He leaves around sunset. Hair combed neatly to the side and freshly shaven, Steve’s dashing in a fitted suit and tie. 

In the middle of passing around a basketball, Erik Killmonger, in all his subtlety, whistles, “Looking fresh, white boy!”

Steve smirks, smoothing the front of his jacket, “This monkey suit? I’d rather be in circuitry.”

He’s been laying low since Siegehook, since Bucky’s arm, and since you. But now the story’s changed and he’s gotta get his narrative straight— he’s introducing a new character, changing the players, and guiding the spotlight exactly where it needs to go.

Jimmy Fallon— Kimmel? One of the Jimmies personally flew into Hong Kong for a special taping of his late-night show. Orion racked up eleven kills; it’s another record and the people want what they want.

Fury called the three you of into his office after the network reached out. Strategized shrewdly to have Steve on this particular broadcast because it’s not as serious as a news report and not as wordy as an interview—too many things can go wrong in both: cross-examinations, misquoting, scrutiny after the fact.

Steve works best in front of a live audience. He’ll sit down tonight—broad and tall—smile at the camera and the host, make a few charming quips, and then he’ll let the world know.

_James has been hurt. The next breach will overlap his recovery time—don’t worry, everybody, fortunately, there’s a pilot available to step in and fill his place until he’s fully healed. And yes, he’ll be back soon, both in the Jaeger and on the show— I know you miss him, he’s even more popular than me, huh? Broody and quiet, right, ladies? He’s a hit!_

Then he’ll laugh and field some questions about his new partner—but keep it vague for both yours and Bucky’s sake.

It didn’t need to be said; you didn’t want to be named, Steve didn’t want to make any assumptions for the future, and Bucky didn’t want to know if anyone thought he couldn’t pilot anymore.

Erik passes and you catch, sidestepping Thor and shooting over his figure—no easy feat considering his massive height and the way Steve is staring you down. You don’t have to be hooked up to his brain to know what he’s wondering. 

Since the trial run, you’ve been feeling the after-effects of the drift in oscillating waves. Sometimes you catch yourself standing ramrod straight, physically feeling heavier, knowing it’s him.

 _You okay? We talked about this._ Yes, you are. No, you aren’t. It’s complicated. He’s fixes his tie the same time you spot a wrinkle. After-effects.

Erik jumps for a rebound when you miss the next basket, getting it knocked away by Thor’s enormous hand. Steve’s already gone when you look back, but Erik is passing again, and your next shot sinks through the net.

“That’s fuckin’ _right_!” He knocks his elbow into yours proudly, pushing sleeves over elbows until you can see the patterns of scarification up his arms. Feet back and forth on the scuffed concrete with distracted rhythm, you dribble, thoughts still on Steve.

“Hey,” a voice calls over the sound of the slamming ball. Barnes toes the edge of the makeshift court. A jacket is tucked under his arm, baseball cap atop his dark head. “Come on, it’s Friday night and you’re thinking too much. I wanna show you a place.”

-

He leads with confidence, directing the taxi in practiced Cantonese picked up over the last two years. Then, once disembarked, he peeks back every few minutes on the street, checking to see if you’re still following. Your gait is awkward—steps firm, but lopsided. All off kilter and wound up like a spring.

It’s okay. In Bucky’s experience, food always helps. He’s taking you to his favorite restaurant—hole-in-the-wall Sichuan. He hollers over his shoulder, “You better be prepared for spice!”

-

Red lacquered doors open with a tinkering sound, a tiny overhead bell signaling new arrivals. A hostess steers through a path of similarly varnished tables and decorated chairs when Bucky asks for a quiet corner. Fish tanks of koi gleam green and blue. Chandelier scatters gold and white diamond shapes on a ceiling painted like a cloudy sky.

Hot tea first, and he sips carefully, gaze moving up to the T.V. behind your back when you’re busy flipping through the menu. A few more minutes pass of your furrowed brow sinking deeper and Bucky’s hand slides quickly across the tablecloth, nudging the booklet from your clutch.

“I got this.” And relief washes over your entire body like rain.

-

The appearance of entrees breaks your trance. Mai Gai, Char Siu Bao, Dan Dan noodles, and eggplant in garlic sauce—you’re trying to tell him it’s too much, wondering when he even _ordered_ , but he ignores you. Not his fault you spaced out, he says, _catch_ , and a napkin flies directly into your chest.

It makes you laugh, and Bucky secretly wants to tell you that it wouldn’t kill you to do it more often. Why the hell not, anyway? He’s tired of being upset about something that was largely inevitable. He knew the risk of death when they signed up to be Rangers so on the bright side, at least it’s his arm and not his head. At least it’s _his_ arm and not his co-pilot’s. You’ve proven to be more than capable and proven to be someone he can trust with Steve’s life.

If Bucky had any doubts about whether or not that damned Rogers determination would see them through—they’ve been dispelled now.

The drift was _sound_. When Steve stepped out from the loading dock, he was lighter like half his weight had been sloughed off. When you followed, helmet pulled from your face, Bucky could see where it landed. Your hips, your shoulders, defiant—even if temporarily—coming down from the high of the handshake. Squared and strong, you looked at Bucky and certainty gleamed from your eyes.

You _are_ Orion’s new pilot. He’s gotta give it up. It could be worse.

Bucky’s fingers shift as he unsnaps chopsticks and grabs spoons, the plates on his left clicking quietly, flexing his pointer when it sticks. Sometimes the prosthetic is a little glitchy because nothing’s perfect, but Stark and Shuri are constantly making updates. They use technology from the spinal clamp to connect his synapses, running tests on its reaction time, sensitivity, and functionality. He can feel pressure, but not pain, and wouldn’t it be nice if it applied elsewhere, too?

He passes your utensils over, wrapped loosely in a napkin. _It could be worse._

“Hey Barnes,” you call earnestly, running your fingers over an embossed floral pattern on the paper, “Thanks.”

He’s not looking at you yet, firmly on a mission for soy sauce and chili oil. He makes a well of it in a ceramic dish and stirs with a chopstick, moving it to the center of the table, finding distraction in small tasks.

“…Barnes?”

“It’s Bucky,” he says finally, flicking his eyes to your hopeful face, “You can call me Bucky, alright? Usually that’s only for Steve, but you’ve been in his head—know me now, I guess. You might as well. Hold your horses—I’ll serve you.”

Speechless, you put your hands in your lap and observe him scoop food, the syllables of his offered nickname tapping like a metronome over your curious tongue.

 _Bucky_ , you consider, watching the way he moves. _Bucky_ , with his long hair pulled back and out of his cap. _Bucky,_ his soft and worn hoodie, boots drumming gently against the table leg, eyes discreetly glazed over because he doesn’t think you notice the change in his mood.

Bucky, who made you laugh in the Jaeger hangar—even if he did threaten your life upon the first meeting. Who could have let you rot from boredom and worry, but instead took you into Hong Kong to his favorite restaurant without being asked to. Who could hate you—truly, _truly_ hate you—for taking half his life from him, but instead is piling a mound of fragrant jasmine rice on your plate.

“What?”

“Bucky. I like it. It sounds nice.”

A clipped noise of displeasure, “Okay. Don’t fuckin’ wear it out.”

“Bucky…?” You murmur, sly. “Bu-cky. Buck-y.” The tips of his ears swell pink as you continue, emphatically pressing your lips together, letting your jaw hang open, pronouncing with precision. A bite of a steamed bun and you lick the edge of your mouth, “Bucky…hm…”

He sputters.

“Would you stop? Jesus, you’re annoying just like him— no fucking wonder— the two of you. Just fuckin’ darling.” His words are all run together with how fast his frustrated tongue moves, a healthy flush over his cheeks, spoon clinking on his plate.

It’s cute. Stoic, serious, James— _Bucky_ Barnes– just a boy who can’t take a bit of flirting without lighting up like a candle. It’s fun. You like him, Bucky Barnes.

An unexpected ache overtakes you and suddenly Bucky looks more familiar than he ever has. Something excruciating about the soft crinkles of his brow, the way his generous lips draw back to reveal a sliver of his teeth.

He’s Bucky wiping the sweat from his collar in a dirty alleyway, jeans torn at the knees, bruises budding along his knuckles as he yanks up a troublesome blonde friend. Bucky, young and determined, helping Steve into bed every time he got sick.

Bucky, hovering pallid and broken in the drift, hurt and afraid but you felt his resolute strength in Steve’s head even as he howled in agony. Far off and shuffling in transparent layers until he was little more than a specter, but he was there.

His eyes lift again, raising to point you toward the T.V.

“There’s our boy.”

 _Our boy_. And it keeps hurting.

You twist your torso as Steve steps out from backstage, waving and smiling, impeccably poised. He shakes Jimmy’s hand— silently mouthing _thank you_ and _hey_ because the cheering and yelling is too loud to hear him anyway. You try to stop thinking about Bucky anywhere but corporeal and whole across the tablecloth.

“Hey, Jimmy, how are ya?”

“Good—good, Steve. It’s so great to have you on the show again! Wow, you look great! _Specimen_.”

Steve chuckles modestly, tucking his chin to his chest, “Thanks, you do too.”

“Alright, no need to flatter me, we’re already in love with you, okay?”

You grin the same time Steve does, but whereas he continues to joke and enthrall two hundred people, you grow restless. Bucky refills your tea and drops a crumble of yellow rock sugar in.

“Relax,” he mutters, “It’s fine. He’s good at this. Eat your food.”

And you know this; you know him. Steve’s good when the questions get too personal and when there’s gaps in the conversation—when the cheering interrupts him or when his jaw ticks before he morphs it into a smile.

He’s good when he breaks the news to a hushed audience, gone eerily quiet like they’ve stepped on consecrated ground. Steve gives them those big blue eyes and the room immediately bursts into applause. Some people are crying. The host is shocked into wordlessness.

You feel relieved, getting what you pleaded for. No cameras. No questions. No pressure. The truth is aired, and Bucky seems pleased, too. You’re about to turn around, offer your full attention, thankful for his company, but then something else happens.

Jimmy blinks his stupor away from the blow of Steve’s confession. He takes a sip from his mug and after a short exchange of, _thank you for your transparency, it must have been hard— wow I didn’t think you’d drop a bomb like that on us tonight! I thought I was the one with the ace up my sleeve— ha!_

He points off-stage and says, “After that, I think you deserve a nice surprise, Steve. Ready?”

Tall, gorgeous, lightly curled hair cascading down her back—the surprise is a woman. She steps easily in heels, an off-the-shoulder red dress hugging tight to her body. Stunning. She waves to the audience and they go _wild_. 

Steve shoots up to meet her for a kiss in front of the host desk, shaking his head in disbelief, tangling his fingers in her silky hair. There’s cheering again.

“Oh my god— Jimmy! You sly devil!” He’s overjoyed. “Baby— how’d you—I thought you were working.”

“I can always make an exception for my favorite guy.” She showcases perfectly white teeth and the high apples of her rosy cheeks.

It’s Ophelia Reyez, Steve’s model-turned-actress girlfriend of approximately six months. Her recent appearance on the Victoria Secret fashion show blew up the internet and her last Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover sold out in every gas station you went into.

Their first meeting was at a charity event—raising awareness about pollution in the Pacific, discouraging scavengers from harvesting Kaiju parts after battles. A picture of them standing two feet away made its way through social media the next morning her PR team made contact before noon.

So of course, it was decided; it’s a beneficially mutual relationship, after all. Doesn’t matter if he hates it or not—people don’t want to know that pilots live in a metal box and play basketball on Friday nights. They want to see Rangers in a role— monogamous relationships with beautiful people, white picket fence (or gated community) future in the making, and eventually plump-faced babies in strollers.

Steve’s now back in his seat, shifted so Ophelia is sitting in his lap, turned to the side. His hands are locked around her slender waist—an incredibly believable display of public affection. She kisses his cheek, leans her head on his shoulder, beaming brightly. If you were anybody else, you’d believe it; you have before.

“Fuck me gently with a chainsaw,” you whisper in both awe and annoyance.

“Feeling it, huh?” Bucky speaks plainly around a bite of eggplant when he notices your jaw. That habitual and microscopic signal he’s grown to spot a mile away means Steve’s irritated and pissed off, and now it means that you are, too.

“Yeah,” you admit, shaking your head. You turn back to him, thoroughly bothered, having had enough of the performance.

“Uh-huh. Everyone’s a Fly—even her.”

You sigh at the label— _Jaeger Flies_ , is what he’s saying. Ranger groupies. Derisive titles— and maybe deserved— for men and women who are attracted to pilots solely because they’re pilots. They want the opportunity to be famous or the privilege of being elite.

Even her, Ophelia Reyes. She’ll forever look at Steve Rogers as _the_ Ranger.

Natasha always lamented—usually as she took her earrings off after a date, heels slipping off her pale feet—about another civilian man who worshipped her, and how that would be a dream for most people, to be so adored, so revered, but you always felt her sorrow in the drift, mourning a love she couldn’t have.

She wanted the white picket fence. The normal life, normal husband, normal family. Her clean break from the past where monsters could no longer chase her in Decima and nightmares could no longer chase her at night. Behind closed doors, she was all torn open at the seams. And you’d wordlessly tell her _shut up_ because she had a family with you. You loved her too, wasn’t that worth something?

She’d spiral and spiral and nothing was ever enough.

Your stomach twists and it keeps _hurting_.

-

Bucky pays for dinner. He asks as he pops a mint into his mouth, “Up for dessert?”

“God, Buck.” You groan, and Bucky takes a second to run that through his head again. _God, Buck_. Another thing like Steve.

“C’mon, I wanna show you another place,” he says thoughtfully, “Hold on to your hat, punk.”

A lighthearted swat to your back and then he’s shoving the ballcap hanging from his chair on your head.

-

The streets are lit with all sorts of colors as you follow him through the market, peeing at vendors showcasing an abundance of food and miscellaneous items. You keep telling him you’re too full and can’t eat another fucking bite, but he only commands you to walk it off. The crispiest egg waffles are somewhere down this way, and even though he can’t remember the intersection, it _should_ be close.

Between steps and dodging passerby’s, he relates his own experiences of brief PR relationships. A Russian woman one time, and a Greek woman another time. Cross-cultural because it made the PPDC look good—and it was all about looking good. He loathed it, of course, but he’d bite down a couple of months before their representatives would release those asinine joint statements about “conscious uncoupling” – schedules too busy, still have love for each other in their hearts, though.

“Couldn’t tell you those girls’ middle names. We’d get together just long enough for some media circulation—dates where we’d pretend to be offended when pictures leaked on TMZ.”

“Well,” you muse over a vision of Bucky leaned back on Steve’s mattress, returned late and bored of another paparazzi encounter swarming him in the lobby of some hotel. You know it like a dream—his ankles crossed, shoes shucked off. _Fuckin’ wild, Stevie. This girl. My knees ain’t what they used to be._

“Least you got your dick plenty wet, didn’t ya?”

He makes a noise like an engine backfiring—offended like you’ve pawned off his prized possessions or something. 

“Jesus—you’re an ass.” He slams the bill of the cap down until it hits you in the nose. Another huff, more cursing, and then he’s saying _fuck you_ before speeding off alone. 

You chase cheerily, finding his chestnut head peeking over the crowd with ease because he’s tall and hard to lose in Hong Kong. A few more blocks down with him looking back surreptitiously to make sure you’re not lost, and Bucky ends up being the one who is _actually_ lost.

“Shit. Can’t find the stand,” he grumbles, “Don’t give me that face. These are way better than the ones we passed earlier—fucking all soft in the middle—fresh pandan leaf, alright? You don’t get it.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” you laugh, feeling your cheeks grow tired from the way they’ve been lifted all night.

A stifled, hot breeze of urban downtown mixes with a chilly gust of wind, carrying Bucky’s petulance away though the throng. Blinking, you look around, craning your neck and shuffling to the curb. Stalls with hanging lanterns. Carts lined with pickled mango. Vendors grilling skewers of pork and cleaving roast duck into chunks.

You suddenly dart from him across the busy road and barely avoid a rickshaw balancing two enormous baskets of finger bananas. When you return, you hold up matching green popsicles. One gets shoved into his mouth, other one into yours. Pandan, like he wanted.

“Hey, it’s not bad,” you give it another taste. Lingering coconut, a little bit leafy, but not unpleasant. “Oh shit— _cold_!”

Bucky licks his lips, stinging red from the ice. You shudder loudly as brainfreeze hits, another chatter of your teeth following when a gust of wind whips through. He shrugs his jacket from his shoulders.

-

He calls you a dumbass after an embarrassing story about the time you skinny-dipped in a pond near The Icebox in the middle of winter. A handsome man, your eager libido, and a handle of whiskey had been involved. You giggle about being bed-ridden for half a week afterwards. But, you got his number and a few good nights in his bed.

“Guess you’re not as boring as I thought.”

You whistle, “Sweetheart, I got stories that’ll put some hair on your chest.”

Bucky smacks you on the shoulder. “ _Ass_.”

-

The Shatterdome comes into view much later.

What would have normally been a three-hour excursion, at most, has unintentionally into six and you’re nowhere close to tired—not quite ready for it to end. Bucky is bright with energy, too.

The past hours have been dedicated to recalling old tales. One led to another, threads pulled from the most insignificant of mentions—your old Boston Terrier’s underbite; Bucky accidentally knocking Steve’s bottom lip into his own braces in sixth grade and it swelled up so big he could hardly talk; Natasha, unable to pronounce fucking _aluminum_ out of all the damn words in the world; you, unable to pronounce _facetious_ ; and then Bucky, trying his own hand at it and realizing he can’t either.

“Fa—fa-shish-shush? Fascist—tus? Factitious… Ah, _shit_.”

“ _Buck_ ,” you gasp through another fit, “ _Bucky_ —you have to shut up. Oh—Oh my god—my face _hurts_.”

“Christ, who fucking made this word up?” He turns the corner toward the living quarters, shaking his head. Just you and him between the rooms and his steps slow at the advent of an inbound _goodnight_.

Bravely, now that you’re in more secluded space, you offer, “I can tell you more… if you want. Anything. It’s only fair.”

“Yeah,” he says, going quiet and careful. “If you want to.”

So, you take a deep breath, bookended by a nervous grin because other than Steve, the only person who knows anything about you outside a confidential manila folder is dead.

“Well, it might surprise you, since I’m just so goddamn talented—”

“Oh, _here_ we fuckin’ go.”

“Kidding. I wasn’t good at anything,” you elbow him before fishing out your key. “Other than getting into trouble.” Clicks of the cylinder and your vault door squeaks open. “Lots of fighting—I was a small kid. Had nothing but the clothes on my back and just the biggest chip on my shoulder.”

“Sounds like someone I know.”

Yeah. It’s funny. Steve’s alleyway fisticuffs might as well have been your own. You tell him as soon as the PPDC started recruiting again, you were in line. Their standards were confusingly specific and the tests they ran didn’t make any sense, but you passed and landed in Kodiak Island under the austere care of Stacker Pentecost. 

Flipping the light on, you invite him inside. “I’d been in and out of foster homes. Barely had a high school degree. Got into… bad work. You know—what do homeless young adults with questionable moral codes do when their 9-5 isn’t paying the bills?” It’s desperate joke to break up the tension but he doesn’t take the bait.

“I’m not judging.”

You plop down on the edge of your table—a spotty metal thing pilfered from a vacated room. He takes the single seat in front of you, moving a dusty glass of water toward the wall, expression only showing attentiveness.

“Well, anyway…” you pause, “I was in the Bay Area after Trespasser—you know, scavenging. But, well, it changes your perspective a little when you’re sneaking through government tape at 3 in morning—stepping over flowers and memorabilia for all the deaths—to crouch over a monster’s fucking toenail.” 

“Hell,” a sardonic and self-deprecating grin, “I might have been a degenerate street urchin, but someone’s family got taken from them and here I was—monetizing their tragedy.”

Arching your back for more comfort, you splay your left leg over the surface, “Pentecost always said if I was lucky enough, I’d suffer brain damage or radiation poisoning, but might as well die in a Jaeger than in a ditch like I figured I always would. Son of a bitch had my number.”

Bucky’s lips are pursed lightly, eyes are tracing the path of your laces through bent hooks when you wriggle your boot back and forth. He spreads his hand over your ankle, keeping you still.

You swallow when he squeezes.

“Uh— I met Nat at Kodiak.” Bucky is warm. You oscillate between ignoring him and focusing on him, clinging to his hold instead of chasing the thought of Natasha too much. “We were… very similar. Childhood, um, troubles and all that.” You give him a pointed look and he makes a small noise of understanding with no intention to press for details, “She became my best friend. The first person I had. My only family.”

A nod of mock irritation and he says, “Yeah. Steve was always a part of mine. Sometimes they say they like him more than me. Can’t blame ‘em.”

“It’s the charm. They make it seem effortless, huh?”

“Fucker can’t take a bad picture to save his life.”

You laugh. “A smile like the goddamn _sun_!”

“One look into those stupid blue eyes and you’re a goner.”

“ _Criminally_ pretty.”

“Hah!” Bucky snorts, “Pretty enough for all of us.”

The floodlight on the wall casts darkness in the shape of your head over his shoulder. Lines of wayward hair caress his neck, tapered strands resting on his collarbones, chestnut glowing orange. His irises stipple forest green when it touches the light, smile nostalgic and lovely. 

“Don’t be stupid,” you look at him for another minute longer, “You’re pretty, too, Buck.”

A raise of his brow. Bucky’s mouth opens and closes a few times vacantly. “Thanks,” he mutters finally. Then, bashfully, “So are you.” 

Then, a cautious murmur of your name that you almost miss, and he’s peering up at you, deliberately soft. Bucky’s thumb knead small circles over the stitching of your jeans.

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

 _You loved her_ , _didn’t you_?

The years sweep through, passing over your face in a range of rapid-fire emotions. Bucky watches them change like shadows of a bonfire. Delight, amusement, longing. Anger, despair, grief. Deep and unforgiving because she was your whole world—all you had— and she left too soon.

You inhale and it sounds like a sniffle— exhale, and it sounds like a sob. No going back now; you did promise him anything.

 _You loved her_ , _didn’t you_?

Of course you loved her. Natasha-fucking-goddamn-Romanoff. Yeah, of course you did.

You loved her like a sister. You loved her like a lover. You loved her in reflexive ways, like mother’s intuition, finding your motivation in the need to protect her even though she hardly ever needed protection. You loved her like precious gems. You loved her like she was made from your own rib. You loved her enough to love unreciprocated.

“Well, you spend years living with someone, in their brain, learning everything about them— every decision in and out of their control that led them up to who they ended up being. Their—all their impulses and all the things they think about themselves. How—how they hate themselves sometimes.”

You’d always said you were the stupid one. Too stupid to reflect on the past and too stupid to let it burden your conscience the way she’d let hers. A running gag whenever her hand jammed putting on a lipstick she’d worn a million times and you’d finally have to do it for her.

 _Cheer up, Nat. You’re too pretty to cry._ You’d line her lips, pat in rouge delicately, encouragingly. And then you’d shut up because there was nothing you could tell her. A million reassurances rolled off her back because they only made her feel worse. She clung onto your care like another weapon in her chest because she couldn’t return it even though you told her you wanted nothing from her but happiness. _Jesus Christ, Nat, I thought I was the stupid one._

“When you know someone like that, it’s easy, isn’t it? You see them exactly for who they are and suddenly there’s no longer the concept of good or bad. What else could I do but love her? Especially when she thought so little of her damn self—tried everything to be someone else but—Jesus, if you only knew how _radiant_ she was—”

You shut your eyes. “A smile… like the goddamn sun. Ah, _fuck—"_

And now you’re crying. You haven’t cried about Natasha in almost half a year because it’s something you track like the entrance bay’s war clock. Five months. Ten days. Zero again.

You’re choking back too many words and you don’t even know why you said all of that. You start apologizing, rattling out more, too much again, desperately like a prayer, pitch escalating higher and higher. “She deserved everything. A life that was completely—solely—hers. A life that made her happy— and why— why _her?_ ”

 _Why not me?_

Bucky hears it in the silence. Watches it descend like a funeral shroud, weighing you down until you look as heavy as Steve on his worst days—when he stares at Bucky’s arm, like Bucky can’t see, can’t feel him there. And he knows Steve is thinking, _why not me_?

Bucky rises to his feet, stepping next to your uselessly dangling leg, resting his left hand on your shoulder and you grasp him, clutching achingly tight, torn to bits. And it’s too much all at once.

“I’m sorry,” you sob, locked around his bicep, his forearm, fingers digging into the smooth obsidian plates, fisting the fabric of his sleeve. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” As if he were Natasha—as if you could stop both her death and his mangling, or at least hold her the way you are holding him now.

You’re smashed into little pieces, barely keeping your head above water, holding it all in, and no one recognized how you were drowning the entire time.

Solemnly, curiously, he feels like he’s seeing you for the first time—but not quite. Remnants of familiarity sparks in him—the filmy plastic layer of an old photograph pressing down to reveal something he once knew and finally knows again.

You make helpless noises, staring numbly ahead, tears rolling out like marbles to drop into your lap.

Bucky shakes his head, “I’m fine,” he whispers gently—frustratedly—brow furrowed, his fingers rubbing the salt from your chin, “Quit your blubberin’.” He tilts your face up to the light, watching you take a shuddering breath, exhausted from unearthing buried skeletons.

It’s wet when he kisses you, supple flesh chapped around the edges from anxious gnawing, swollen hot from weeping. It’s soft and quick, and then he pulls away.

“St—sorry,” he says, mouth pressing into a thin line, lips drawn in and tentatively licked. “Sorry, I don’t know… I don’t know why I did that. I shouldn’t have.”

Your eyes are sad—big and vulnerable, inflamed red, confused, worried, something else weaving through the damp gaze. Your strong, small fingers are still tight on him, and even though Bucky pulled away and apologized, he rushes forward again.

His free hand curls around your neck, supporting your head. Lips part and close, pressing firmly, expertly, naturally. It feels like he’s kissed you before and missed it— like a kiss he’s been waiting on for a long time.

Banging on your door jerks him away. You careen off the tabletop, smooth the back of your hair, wipe your face and the vault creaks open.

“Marshal,” Bucky greets.

“Rangers…” Fury’s steps are suspicious, phone in his hand aglow. “I _thought_ we had a plan.”

Your heart is beating too fast, the press of Bucky’s plush lips still warm, the scent of his skin still near. You sense it like an imprint, feel it like a brand. The room spins with an onslaught of possible scenarios—all horrendously unclear.

“Care to explain this to me?” The marshal turns his phone toward you, the lit screen displaying a photo of a dark street, illuminated by red and yellow lanterns. A thick crowd is spread around stalls of fruit and knick-knacks.

The headline reads _James Barnes Spotted in Hong Kong with Mystery Woman,_ and the two of you are circled inside a red ring. You’re teetering off the curb of the sidewalk next to a sewer grate. It’s grainy and distorted, but Bucky’s striking features are clear.

“And this one?”

Bucky’s cap on your head, popsicle sticks between your teeth and his.

_Steve Rogers on Jimmy! Jimmy Barnes on a Date!_

_James Barnes Officially Over Penelope Mercouri._

_James Barnes’ Injury?_

Fury tucks his device back into his coat. “Not that I care what you get up to on your spare time, but we had a tale to tell. It’s hard pushing an agenda when you’re pushing the wrong way.”

“We just got dinner,” you stutter, an upsurge of guilt rising. The speculation, the kiss, the gut-wrenching reflex that feels like a crime. Fury’s calculating now, looking from you to Bucky, assessing the situation with some pity because you truly look pitiful.

“What you _got_ is PR on cleanup. Potts has been trawling Twitter for the last 20 minutes. For someone who doesn’t want to be in the public eye, you’re making a lot of noise.” He points to Bucky’s jacket still over your shoulders.

You tear it off. “It’s not—”

“Oh no—I won’t be losing sleep any over it.” The marshal’s single eye blinks calmly, “She can spin the story, but _you_ become responsible for this.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Ranger, that the spotlight is on you now. And there is nowhere to run.”

And if you didn’t think it could get any worse, footfalls down the hallway reach your ears in a pattern that you recognize immediately. Here he is, stepping into your room like it’s his own, suit jacket over his forearm, shirt halfway untucked and tie pulled loose. His lips drawn together and unreadable.

But you read it: Steve’s seen the pictures, too.

And goddamn, if you didn’t think it could get _any_ worse— the earsplitting alarm announcing sudden movement in the breach startles you all.

“Orion Bravo, report to Bay 08, Level B. Codename Polidori. Category 2 Kaiju.” Shuri’s reedy voice is collected but critical. The thin screen next to your bed blinks on primary colors, wavy lines of activity rising and falling, counting down until emergence. Three hours.

Banner streams down the hall. The ruckus drowns him out.

Fury’s dark skin is ochre beneath the lights, “Category 2,” he says, “Should be achievable. Odinsons will be on standby, guarding the Miracle Mile. Maximoffs on the coastline. They’ll come to you if necessary. Shelve your personal troubles, Rangers, we’ll continue this conversation later.”

-

Circuitry. Battle armor. Helmet beneath your arm. Muscle memory cuts down the time to seven minutes until you’re set to board, but you need more. Just a few—you have to tell him—better now than later—better from your mouth than from the drift. So, you blurt, “Bucky kissed me.”

Steve turns.

“We kissed. It—it’s nothing. I just needed to tell you before we get in. Didn’t want to seem like I’m hiding anything—I’m not.” It sounds so stupid, like a child admitting fault for breaking a window with a too-hard throw. It sounds like betrayal.

His helmet is gripped tightly in the crook of his elbow. Steve’s chin juts out incrementally, chewing on the inside of his lip, the air around him gone stagnant until he makes a noise both like a scoff and a hum.

“Sure. Fine. I get it—you’re lonely.” Worse than any response you expected to receive. “You know what I mean.”

It must be a testament to the depth of your connection now— you knowing him, him knowing you in all the ways that can make an argument escalate into atomic warfare. Precision strikes and then the two of you walking Ground Zero in its aftermath. 

“Wait—you think I’m _lonely_?” You block his way out, furious. “What the fuck does that— have you met yourself? Girlfriends who will _never_ see you for who you are. Ophelia Reyez? Katherine Lau?”

_Orion Bravo. Report to the loading platform._

“I know exactly what I’m doing—do _you_? I spent all evening on T.V. for _you_ –”

“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, Mister Martyr in front of a drooling audience telling white lies and screwing a Victoria’s Secret Angel in some penthouse suite— such _sacrifices_ you’ve made in my honor.”

_Orion Bravo. Report to the loading platform._

“What the fuck have _you_ done lately?” Steve snaps, “Other than try to fuck my co-pilot?”

His words hit like a kick in the goddamn teeth. You slam your helmet into his chest and the polycarbonate shells knock together violently.

“ _I’m_ your fucking co-pilot,” you snarl, “ _You_ wanted _me_.”

Steve steadies himself, twisting until he’s glaring directly at you down the bridge of his nose, “ _Enough_. We’re being hailed, I’m not breaking this record because of you, and not for a Category 2. Get your shit together.”

You grind your molars when he pushes you aside, stumbling on shaking legs. Your brain feels gnarled—misshapen and bent up in sharp, jagged points—and as much as you want to stomp his goddamn face in—he’s right: you can’t feel this way. You _can’t._ It’s your first drop in two years with the best pilot by your side—and you’re responsible for his life. The last one proved disastrous, and you cannot risk that again.

Your suit feels heavier with each step. When you climb in after Steve, the rig feels more obstinate. Your head, chest, heart are all swollen with turmoil and hot rage.

He’s next to you, breathing deeply. You mimic, shelving personal troubles like the marshal commanded.

 _Out of alignment_ , the automated voice of the system calls, and you push it back further, grab the entire shelf and hurl it into the depths. Steve sends you an incisive look. A blame. You take a breath, another, and another. _Fuck_!

“Orion.” The heads-up display spotlights Bucky’s face in the control room, emotionless. “ _Focus_.”

You inhale one more time, seeking reassurance in his unwavering gaze—necessary peace in the silhouette of his phantom left arm. Bucky. Steve. Natasha. You. There can be no more loss. You cannot let it happen again.

_Levels stabilizing._

To your right, Steve makes a noise like he’s shaking something off.

 _Neural Handshake complete_.

Bucky stands behind the glass, watching aircrafts lower their hooks. A nod of his dark head is the last thing you see before Orion is lifted from the hangar.

-

There would be a fucking _storm_.

You’ve always hated fighting in the rain because Kaiju are enormous, slippery, alien amphibians, and Orion’s left fist slides off more times than you’d like. This one’s much smaller than Orion, which allows it the slight advantage of speed, slicing through the water like a shark, corkscrewing for an extra boost of velocity before emerging with a splash from behind.

A miss when you and Steve weave away, hazarding a minor scratch to the right shoulder before Orion’s shield knocks it back.

Despite the vexing evening and the simmering hurt in the pit of your chest, the drift is steady. So, you take it for what it is, cast the rust off your bones, and the two of you do some fucking _damage_ on this thing.

Banner named it Polidori, after the writer credited with inventing the vampire genre. K-Science sonars detected protruding fangs and petal flaps folded on its back like vestigial wings. _So,_ _Polidori_ , he shrugged, _it’s cute_.

You discover with swift horror that the flaps are neither vestigial nor cute when Polidori pulls one sliver of leathery skin free with a splat. An atrocious shriek rings over the storm as it struggles with its own body, then another shriek and the left pillar continues to stretch, knobby blunt end of its shoulder blade shooting high, ripping itself full of gaping holes in its endeavor. 

Banner was more accurate than he realized.

“Orion!” Shuri’s voice is sharp, “Bring it down! Do not let it into the air! Use your cannon!”

You’re frozen stuck, eyes squeezed shut at the sight of stretched membrane. A terrified whimper and a puncture of nauseating memory nicks at Steve’s concentration.

 _No!_ Levels spike on the HUD screen. _Fuck!_ Steve is caught in the undertow and the rig jams beneath both your feet.

“Orion! You’re out of alignment! Orion!”

She’s here.

Natasha’s bright hair is unfurling all around you. There’s deafening splintering when the incisors of her killer punctures through Decima’s chest and both Natasha’s legs. Metal grinds against metal, the sound searing itself into your eardrums—your brain—your heart. Wings are beating—wild flaps of rubbery sails against the downpour—muffling screams from Decima’s cockpit.

It’s as real and cruel as the last time you saw it.

 _Bi Fang_ , like the bird from Chinese mythology, beaked and blessed with flight to make up for its one leg. Bi Fang the Kaiju was legless, and Natasha was convinced Decima could take it. You had no reason to think otherwise; five previous kills cultivated your confidence. You had her by your side, after all. Two orphans with something to prove, proving it again and again.

 _Wings and fangs? No legs? Six is an auspicious number._ The smirk on her lips blooms fiercely. You’re laughing when Decima hovers above the water. _Alright, Tasha. Six drops._

A tremendous splash and you touch ground.

She grins. _Six kills._

Polidori has one limb fully flexed, fragmenting pixels bending into the shape of Bi Fang. Natasha is bending, too, lowering her center of gravity. Her elbows are against her ribs, fists set. _This is gonna hurt_. _Come to–_

_Come to me! To me!_

He’s stepping in ink. In water. And then metal is beneath Steve’s feet. There are flashes of rain, of lightning, and he recognizes her dead center of the storm. 

Natasha Romanoff, vibrant and joyful through the glass of her helmet. You, next to her, reciprocal smile on your face stuck in hysteria, tears streaming down your cheeks in stripes. Steve’s hand is reaching but going nowhere. Echoes overlap of crying and shouting. Yours. Hers. His.

_Come to me!_

He yells again, but you’ve chased the rabbit too far.

_Come to me!_

He’s trying his hardest, stretching himself like ropes to bridge the fissure. He feels your fear, your hurt, and for a flash, it eats him whole. It spits him out a twisted-up way and his brain screams for Bucky.

Bucky is screaming through the control room, reaching his will out to Steve, praying their connection still holds despite their distance. He’s yelling for you, too.

“Steve! Get the hell out of it! Steve, _you need to get her!_ ”

The ripping of Bucky’s red left arm loops three times in quick succession before Steve can temper it down. Bucky is howling, crying, sobbing. Steve is breathless, stuck, rattled, steeling his entire body to witness the amputation for another inescapable replay until your frozen body smears across his blurry field of vision. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck!_

Bright whites burst behind his eyelids. Flares of panicked emotion. Bucky. Natasha. Him. You. A rippling chain of trauma lashing Orion open.

“Come on— _Steve!_ It’s moving! Steve!”

“Buck! I’m— I’m okay! Just— need a second.” Steve scrambles for his sanity, latching on, knowing Bucky’s well— _alive_ and not hurt. Shuri begins urging him to get up faster. Polidori’s moving slow, but it is moving, and it needs to be put down _now_. She’s calling for the Odinsons— _Colossus, be prepared to walk-_

The metal under Steve’s feet slides away. Water returns, ink flowering behind it—molasses and murky. His steps are unsteady, chest heaving as he advances through a field of speckled glimmers like fireflies at dusk. Each flicker reflects a distorted and agonized shard of your face.

A flit of your voice rushes behind his head. Steve whips around and tries to catch it. No such luck.

Again, to the right. Then gone each time he spins. It builds and builds until he feels half-deaf, frantically invoking your name into the ether where it becomes lost in dissonance. Butterfly-winged iridescence scatter and plummet, shrieking, shrieking, shrieking. 

And then nothing.

He finds you crumpled over on Anchorage’s shore.

Decima reaches sand as a crackling mess of Jaeger parts, chest piece ripped clean off the right side. You clamber out of the rig, hugging Natasha’s mutilated corpse. Your drivesuit is split open down to the hip, the glass of your helmet fractured and splattered with blood from your nose– still dripping.

He shakes his head, attempting to free himself of your scarred clutch. You had been hooked into the rawest fear—linked up when she died— gored and broken with half your brain believing it is _also_ dead. Chills race up his spine and breaks him out in a cold sweat. He feels strangled to his very soul.

Then, seizures take you—the casualties of solo piloting—the neural damage come to collect. Nobody know how many miles you steered Decima alone. It should have killed you.

Your eyes roll up to the sky, body convulsing before slamming into the ground like a rag doll, shaky fingers still reaching for your co-pilot. Steve shudders quietly, flinching with each impact. A final wail and everything slackens to a dull vibration. You quiver on the sand, howling and crying for Nat.

Polidori’s right wing casts itself loose, jaw opening wide. Steve’s on a time limit; there are only a few grains left in the hourglass. He croaks your name.

A second of recognition triggers from behind the curtain and it’s miraculously enough for you to see him. It’s enough.

He begs. He begs on his goddamn knees, crawling to you.

_Look at me, only at me. Come back to me, please. Please. Please._

Steve gathers you in his arms, both of you trembling and afraid. Your suit heals itself, pieces stitching back together, blood little by little disappearing from your nose. Natasha shimmers away. 

He presses the glass of your helmets together. He needs to get closer.

_Steve? S-Ste-Steve—Steve?_

You’re still crying. You’re breaking his heart.

_Yes. I’m here._

_St-Steve, what d-d-do I do?_

_You’ve got me now. I’m here with you. You understand?_

He can see you struggling to escape, clawing with nails and teeth and every inch of your consciousness to return to the present.

_Yeah. Y-Yes._

_We have to move._

_Steve—Steve—everything hurts._

_Just for now. Just for a little bit—but I’ll make it better, I promise. Nothing’s gonna hurt you again. Will you hold on to me? Do you trust me?_

_Y-yes… Yes, yes. I trust you._

The rig lurches back to life beneath his feet. Jittery and creaking with strain, Orion rocks forward with a rumble. The drift stirs once more, noise giving way to silence.

Steve’s vision clears. You’re back in the present, precariously grounding your strength inside his guidance. You raise an unsteady left arm. He powers it up. Energy surges through the cockpit, tremors running up your side as it charges. Your hand splays. Steve’s palm takes aim.

_Activating plasma cannon._

The beam pierces Polidori’s shoulder and its roar chases a simultaneous thunderclap.

A crack of lightning flushes the sky purple. Orion’s right arm lifts high above its head and slams back down. The glowing hot edge of the shield cleaves through Polidori’s skull.

-

Bucky’s grip on the control room’s railing feels like it could warp metal. Wilson is on his right, other pilots in a row next to him. All silent.

Through the relay of Orion’s camera, Polidori’s writhes one final time. A death throe—pathetic trilling drowned by rising water, falling into deep darkness. Overhead, Kaiju clean-up advances, jet engines rumbling behind an ashy horizon. Orion’s shield retreats to its side with a wet, sloppy sound. The handshake pulled through. Steve got to you.

The room vibrates with the shouting of about fifty voices. Sam is banging on the railing, strong fists rocking the entire length of it, roaring with glee. The others are even wilder— shoving each other in triumph.

Bucky tunes it out, waiting for quieter confirmation. He can hear the both of you despite the racket. Steve’s steady pants, cut with throaty relief—this one, Bucky’s familiar with. Your small, weak sobs strangled with tears—this one, he’s quickly learned, but knows now in his bones.

“Twelve drops,” you announce hoarsely. Raw. “B-Buck?”

He grins, dazed comfort rushing over, your voice chasing the torture away.

“Twelve kills, sweetheart,” Bucky says, “You did it.”

-

The raucous celebration in the Shatterdome simmers down around four, sunrise just a couple hours behind the horizon. Unruliness had broken out, triggering a party that lasted from the time Orion got picked up ‘til now— and still there’s chatter in the common room. 

It’s normal; Anchorage celebrated too after most kills—as long as no one died.

You’re freshly showered and changed, barefoot as you patter it back to your room. Voices from other beds are lowered as you pass—friends taking banter back to private spaces, couples pressed up against each other. All standard-issue revelry to commemorate the endurance of life. 

It’s how these things go. Violence on a massive scale, humanity threatened with extinction—the people closest to death feel it the most. When routine becomes monotony, it’s good once in a while to be stimulated again.

Damn near two thousand people in close quarters—Rangers in perfect form, friendships assembled on the foundation of sharing an exceptionally singular purpose. Even Pentecost in all his grave formalities couldn’t ward off human nature. Plenty of pilots hooked up with each other and other staff in Anchorage and no one cared as long as it didn’t muck anything up on the job. At least the marshal could control that; mishandle your personal relationships and you’d be off the docket for your next drop.

Sex is biology. Desire is human.

It’s hard for you to feel human this morning. Exhausted by the fight and the prior evening—awake now for over 24 hours, you broke away from the commons as soon as you arrived, spending an hour simply breathing in the steam, the habit achingly comforting. Your chest still feels tight, heart bloated with invasive flashbacks.

You used to decompress with Natasha. A few drinks, tales from the cockpit, shadowboxing and putting on a show, glad to be in the company of friends— to be back safely with each other. Then you’d scatter with the crowd, meet her in the showers, and help her wash her hair in silence. Nothing but the trickle of shampoo down the drain.

She’d cry, sometimes. Catharsis, mostly. Curled up in your arms, the both of you cozy in pajamas on the floor. Then off to bed where she’d climb under your sheets, falling sleep with her head on your shoulder, your fingers in her hair.

A love unspoken. A home in the shape of a twin-sized bottom bunk. Cramped and narrow. Too brief.

You sigh. Everything hurts.

A few rooms away from yours, Steve’s door is open just enough for a line of orange to escape. You know he’s there, waiting patiently as he has been. You went near catatonic on the way back, lying down in the cockpit, no longer needing to be hooked up. You shed the armor, holed yourself into the corner of Orion’s hull, and said nothing when Steve sat by your side.

Walking in front of the light, he places himself in the entrance way until he’s looking at you. His face is a gentle blue shadow, resplendent halo glorious behind his head. He’s dressed in soft pants and a t-shirt damp at the collar. A droplet of water runs down his neck.

It emerges like an orchestral arrangement. Leisurely notes creep into your ears—a tune you’ve always known. Plucks of strings, escalating windchimes. It echoes, the trails on his skin, his measured breath, his percussive voice layering and pleating until there are dozens of him.

_Look at me. Come to me. I need you._

You feel it all at once. A knotted, chaotic tempest. Hesitation. Confusion. Ache. Bucky. Him. You. Your eyes lock with his. A mistake and a revelation.

Steve holds out a steady hand. You take a step, terrified, pulled into his overwhelming atmosphere like magnets, your bodies humming a secret frequency, purring for each other.

The drift opened everything up, but the battle tore it all out. The both of you are laid bare, everything else fallen away.

_Nothing’s gonna hurt you again. You’ve got me now, you understand?_

You reach the shadow he casts, eclipsed entirely by his bulk. Steve threads his fingers between yours and with a tug, you surrender your worries to him.

He’s kissing you before the door is entirely shut and latched. He fumbles for the locks, wraps his arms around your waist. A click and a clatter. He moans into your mouth. 

You exhale from deep inside your chest. He inhales like it’s all the oxygen he needs.

Your hands move to one place, his hands to another. Before your bodies can savor it, the both of you have roamed on, reading each other’s minds, knowing what’s next.

 _More. More. More_.

It’s impatient and fast and Steve picks you up with ease. You forget yourself, forget the world outside the room, outside the three-by-three tile area of where he’s got you lifted, legs wrapped tight around his hips. Fingers dive into the back of your pants, squeezing, up your shirt, pawing at your breasts.

His groans blow heat onto your neck. You arch away, giving him more skin to brand kisses onto. He nips at your throat, light, then again, rough. His voice is raw and thick, husky little clouds making their home on your body.

Gentle sucking on your bottom lip follow each kiss. He takes you to bed, dropping himself onto the mattress, you on top of him. He’s been in your head; he knows what you like. Knows where you want him. Your voice is getting higher, sounds quick and shallow.

Steve guides you with one hand on your hip and the other beneath your thigh, soft pajama bottoms pressing against his. He groans each time you rock forward, needy for more contact against his groin.

You’ve been in his head, too. He likes feeling hands in his hair, so you grip his flaxen strands. He likes hearing, so you make a little more noise. He likes seeing his partner helpless because of him, losing all control, falling apart for him.

So you do. 

Pleasure rushes from the top of your head to the tip of your toes, his name burning in your throat. It’s an incredible shock and you’re spellbound, enraptured by him drinking in the parting of your swollen lips. Quickly, he places you on his thigh, enormous and strong, needing a better position to see— to feel you on him. Hungry attention, eager eyes, pleading like a mother tongue.

“Keep coming for me. Just like this— don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

The shamelessness of it—your underwear soaked to your pants. The fever of it—his body like a fire, low, husky begging just from watching lighting up your spine. It’s extraordinary adrenaline— the heightened and profound connection of knowing one another in _every_ way—as if you were made for each other.

Animal instinct liberated from human sentience. Desire pursuing release. Two bodies colliding and igniting.

You can’t stop the next cresting wave, crying out again.

Steve pushes you on his leg repeatedly, back and forth, solid and firm between your thighs even as you shudder and whimper, telling him it’s too much— you’re too sensitive. He kisses your neck, jaw, chin, cheek. He doesn’t stop moving.

“Hold on to me.”

A bead of sweat collects on the dip of your cupid’s bow. He looks at how sweetly your skin shimmers as you shiver, how your pupils are blown wide, how you look so perfect to him. Steve presses his forehead to yours, looks into your eyes like the way he did in the drift.

You reach for him and rub in quick strokes, fumbling when he rocks you back, gripping when he rocks you forward. Parted lips hover, “One more time for me— _ah_ , please,” he begs, “Before I do.”

But he’s too late and too heated. Steve makes a mess of his sleeping pants, taken over the edge by how you feel without hardly feeling you at all. He buries a groan into your shoulder, riding it out with indelicate thrusts into your palm.

“Oh,” he murmurs, “Oh, fuck. Oh, _fuck_.”

He’s blush pink and beautiful when he remembers himself again, rubbing his cheek against yours. He knows what you’re thinking— the realization in the comedown, the leaching fear of what could have been a mistake. But it isn’t, and Steve remains faithful to your body.

“Stay. I’m sorry—for hurting you. I’ll make it better.” Velvet kisses to your lips and you shake your head, apologies no longer necessary.

A whisper of his name like it’s the most radiant word. You cling to him, kissing him, answering only to him.

-

In the afternoon when Steve is still sleeping, you retreat to your room. You pause at the sight of Bucky already on your bed, caught in the bleary focus of his gaze. With lashes soaked wet, his throat constricts around a forceful swallow.

“Hey,” he says, voice breaking on the syllable. He pats the space next to him and you come sit, turning your knees until they knock into his.

“Bucky…”

He laughs like you’ve told a joke, like the sound of his own name is a funny thing escaping your mouth. “Hoped I could catch you last night, before—” he laughs again. “—before bed. Just wanted to—I guess I don’t know what I wanted to do.”

The hurt resurfaces. You find him through the rose-dappled lenses of Steve’s eyes. Those warm summers with two boys running wild, effortlessly devoted to each other. Your heart swells like you’re there, gazing at russet locks flying in the wind. Years and years between them—Bucky’s smile, lopsided and carefree. Steve’s gaze, illuminating Bucky in every memory.

“Bucky,” you say again, so wonderfully soft, he thinks, even as his chest feels stretched to bursting. “You love him.”

He places his temple on your shoulder, face hidden by the long strands of his hair.

“You’ve been in his head. He’s easy to love.”

“Yes,” you agree, touching his bangs, pushing them over his ear, streaking four affectionate lines through, “He is.”

“So are you.”

Bucky turns into your palm, smiling openly, like the truth is the simplest thing in the world.


	4. Symbiosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Since you’ve been caught—” Fury squints, “Canoodling With The Allegedly Injured James Barnes, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s already halfway finished with digging you up. Forgeries. Petty theft. Grand larceny. The damn rest of the kitchen sink. So, Ranger…” The way he says it is both lazy and threatening, completely on brand and irritatingly calm.
> 
> “Here’s my suggestion: get ahead of this thing before it knocks you on your ass.”

Bucky stays like that a while longer, just breathing.

Your fingers trace his hair—running through the strands, over the shell of his ear, then resting briefly on his cheek. All the ways you used to with Natasha when she’d break her own heart, or maybe ways you would have liked her to have done for you when you felt like you were dying a little bit.

You feel it now: a small death in the wake of last night’s simple touches. Your body and Steve’s body curled around each other sprung something immeasurable, as if the drift flowered then and ripened beneath your skins. You bit into it. You savored its taste. You could have lived on it alone.

Everything smears together like a child’s careless hand in a mess of paints until all the brights muddle dark. A shaky breath as you work yourself into calming, trying to find coherent words while your head remains a pot of sideways soup, at best.

Bucky shifts until he’s looking up at you, nose millimeters away. His irises are just a touch more gray, a sprinkle less green. You can see Steve in him, just as he can see Steve in you and then your eyes begin to prickle, Nat’s face undulating behind the burn.

You don’t really know _what_ you want to say. Maybe apologize, run, beg for forgiveness, grab Bucky by the shoulders and shake him until he understands that you didn’t mean it— you didn’t mean to hurt him. That you love him. That he lives inside you, too.

His ghost from the drift— the aftermath phenomena of the neural bridge when pilots take on a bit of each other’s consciousness out of the cockpit and into the world with them. Take two people with a predisposition for the drift into the cockpit into each other’s brains and they exit heightened—sharper, better—imbued with each other’s strengths and knowledge. Mind-meld long enough, deep enough, and your core endures, but you become a different beast.

When Steve’s consciousness bled into yours, so did Bucky’s. If you walked away with half of Rogers, you also got a quarter of Barnes and it only compounded worse during Polidori’s drop. Resurrecting trauma, agitating itself, making a mess of your weary soul.

You relived his amputation last night, just as fresh as you relived Nat’s death. More visceral than the first trial run, you witnessed him—felt him—torn and hoarse, clutching his shoulder as he rocked helplessly inside Orion’s chest, frayed wires sparking across his cheek and landing in his own blood. His teeth gnashing together as he tried to hold on for Steve’s sake, steering his co-pilot’s panic back on course. Terrified and agonized, but he was hellbent on making it out.

Bucky who made you laugh. Bucky who took you to dinner. Who walked with you, gave you his jacket, listened to your rambling and crying, and kissed you because you reminded him of his co-pilot, or maybe of himself. 

How could you not love him, after all this?

Armageddon slows for nothing though, and before the first letter of his name can fall out recklessly from your mouth, three precise thumps jostles it back in.

Steve’s voice is muffled through heavy steel. “You in there?”

The door slides open with a tremulous croak but neither of you bother to separate. Nothing seems to matter now.

“Buck…” Steve looks from one raw face to the other, stepping forward and reaching out. He grasps Bucky’s hand. “We should talk—” he closes his mouth into a thin line, shoulders slumping heavily before letting go. “I’m sorry. Later. Shit’s hit the fan.”

-

The office is stagnant air full of questions but other than the squeak of the marshal leaning back in his chair, nobody makes a sound.

Fury untucks a finger from the crook of his elbow before pointing it between your eyes.

“Culpability.”

Across the room, you flinch in his crosshairs. Standing apart from them, you’re partially slack against one of many steel filing cabinets, using it to prop yourself up in case your knees might give out as vertigo descends.

It’s been a lot to take in. Everything— the night, the morning, emotionally, mentally, physically. The hull is a steel cage, and pilots are well armored, but you’re still hooked up to the robot enduring damage, taking hits at barely .0001 percent, but taking it all the same. You’re bruised up good beneath your clothes— Polidori’s claws leaving four tender imprints of a scratch to Orion’s right shoulder. Your shoulder. Steve’s shoulder.

To your right, he shifts. A tiny hint of pain streaks over his expression before it falls serene again, fixed on Fury.

“Since you’ve been caught—” the marshal squints, “ _Canoodling With The Allegedly Injured James Barnes_ , I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s already halfway finished with digging you up. Forgeries, petty theft, grand larceny, the damn rest of the kitchen sink. So, _Ranger_ …” The way he says it is both lazy and threatening, completely on brand and irritatingly calm.

“Here’s my suggestion: get ahead of this thing before it knocks you on your ass.”

This _thing_ , being any story a 13-year old kid with two thumbs and a twitter account can spin between now and when you let Pepper Potts spin it for you first. There’s not a lot imagination can’t conjure to fill in the blank pixelated space between Bucky standing on the curb and you right behind him wearing his cap and jacket. Not to mention that once speculation goes live, it starts sprouting all sorts of appendages with minds of their own, and no matter how diligently you might cut one off, two would only sprout in its place.

The marshal stands up and takes heavy steps before turning the corner of his desk, absently tapping a pile of folders together like they’re not already in a perfect column. He slips a manila folder out from the stack and it becomes obvious that his suggestion is just buildup to some other type of impetus.

When you open the file up under his sharp gaze, you feel the blood drain from your face and possibly from your entire body.

The bullet he aimed between your eyes hits home. Cue your brains blowing out slow. Impetus met.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Bucky appears over your shoulder, staring at the same grainy photocopied document. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I make a lot of jokes?” Fury leans forward, pointer curving over the top edge, tapping emphatically _one, two, three_ times, even waving it back and forth in front of your unseeing eyes. “I’ve got a good contact inside the PPDC who risked a lot to get this out. They’re just plans for now, dogeared behind other pages, but don’t doubt the Corps’ cowardice for a second. The second this program looks like it might not hold up, they’ll turn their efforts there.”

You’re gone. Trapped between the lines, vehemently scanning the page, reading the same words over and over until they no longer make sense. But it’s not like they made any sense in the first place.

_ANTI-KAIJU WALL: CONSTRUCTION AGENDA. SPRING 2020._

The conception of a perimeter stretching around the Pan Pacific—North and Central America, East and South Asia to isolate emerging Kaiju. It’s a fetal skeleton at most, the roughest of outlines for a plan, and truthfully, it’s no plan at all.

It’s shameful. It’s _shit_.

The so-called _Wall of Life_ implies the portending death of the Program—of all Shatterdomes and Jaegers. It implies no support, no funding, and no repairs. No Kodiak. No juniors. No future.

Back and forth, you’re still desperately inspecting as if the words might shift into a new message, maybe one that didn’t spell out certain extinction, but despair is rippling across your face. Bi Fang and Polidori had wings, and they were only Category II. Bi Fang _massacred_ one of the best pilots you’ve ever known—and it was only a Category II. Any higher and they’d blow through that wall like a ribbon of wet toilet paper.

Hysteria creeps up at the mere thought of it, fear stubbornly lodging itself in your throat. Nuclear-powered automata—the only proven defense against the terror of massive alien attacks are being dismantled in favor of steel rods and cinderblocks. They might as well build it out of _Legos_.

 _Anti-Kaiju Wall_. A string of ants meeting a boot.

You’re panting softly, tongue swollen in your mouth, shaking with equal parts terror and rage, on the verge of breaking into inappropriate laughter and yelling.

“What—what do they _expect_?” You croak, “The breach opens, the fucking thing comes out, sees a fence, and what—they think it’s—going to crawl back in…?”

“Hey, calm down,” Bucky curls his fingers around your elbow. His hand and its black plates are peering at you, purring, dull gold bands threading at the knuckles. For a second, the prosthetic disappears. For a second, he’s blood red again.

“ _Hey!_ ” Bucky grips tightly when you sway. “I’m _fine_! Don’t— _don’t_.” Steve’s jaw is set firmly on your other side, arms crossed so severely his biceps bulge with the strain.

“ _Nick_ ,” He’s abruptly brusque as he eases the file from your grip. “Give us a minute.”

“You’re in _my_ office.” But the marshal’s words hold no bite. He’s already won; he knows. Cornered again, he’s got you same as before in Red Cloud. 

You get the gist: play out your redemption arc and come clean with your record. Win over the public, hoard all the additional support and funding you can because you’ll need every goddamn cent of it when the PPDC rips it away. The gossip. The photos. The headlines. It’s the perfect opportunity for a few hundred million when the media is putting a magnifying glass on your presence in Hong Kong.

Duty. Duty. Duty.

You’re just one small part of this colossal puzzle—a negligible smear of guts across the battlefield trying to keep the rest of the pieces together while the PPDC sits in their panic rooms throttling the entire fucking thing.

Fury steps to the cabinet and slides the file back in its place, keeping the illusion of it being just another unremarkable envelope in a row of hundreds of others. The metal drawer shuts with a clang, housing the most damning piece of information you’ve ever seen. His tact aside, you know he would never show you his hand like this if it wasn’t completely necessary—or pertinent.

Steve was right, you understand now.

The world owes you. And it _owns_ you.

-

The next six—seven?—hours scatter like pulled teeth with your head spinning like a top the entire way. Pepper had been outside the door for the conversation, waiting on standby to whisk you off for princess lessons. Having already (and correctly) predicted your compliance, Fury scheduled an interview for precisely at nine. Then you were off, towed along by Miss Potts and her hasty strut. 

You try to find perspective, reminding yourself that you’ve successfully gone toe-to-toe with the Empire State Building with fifteen rows of teeth _seven_ fucking times and come out on the other side alive and if not in one whole piece, then at least 2-3 relatively serviceable pieces. You’re functional. A little damaged, but fine enough. But there’s also the fact that you’d just hopped out of Orion not even 24 hours ago coupled with how you’re suddenly in the middle of something that feels less like a confused love triangle and more like divine providence at the end of the world.

 _Fuck._ No time to think about it now. The human brain is not programmed to multitask, and you’re hanging on by a mere thread. You prioritize making it through the night just as alive as you can make it out of a drop. Just a couple of hours and you can rest. Just a couple more.

After what felt like an eternity and a half of simulating Q&A, practicing your posture, smiling into a mirror, and one horrible limo ride where you stared dead-eyed out the window—Steve and Bucky’s steely gazes after you—the building finally comes into view. 

Hair. Makeup. Wardrobe. You wear pants. You smile for the camera. You don’t stand in the middle of the group photo.

8:55 and time halts to a near stop. You can hear your heart in your throat, or in your skull. Your eyes feel switched from their sockets, or stomach rotated 30 degrees. Someone fixes your mic wire, your blouse collar, asking you to turn _just a little over there_. Three cameras are pointed to capture every angle, punitive red dots angry and glaring.

A live broadcast was agreed upon to ensure the least amount of potential edits and skews, as well as the charmingly quaint idea that it’s unscripted. The rub, therein, lies upon the burden of poise and a flawless performance. You rehearsed lines until your jaw felt like it was coming unhinged. Then you did it again. 

Everything requires precision, and you keep that in mind with your hand on the glass of Dom Perignon being constantly refilled. An amicable gesture by the hosts, but their intentions are cunning: loose lips sink ships, and they’re betting on yours to sink the S.S. Orion Bravo.

Out of view, the translator sits with her legs crossed, listening to the questions before turning the words over in English.

You take a sip of champagne and it fires off like a gunshot—Cantonese and English in rapid-fire verses.

< _2017 was a fateful year for both the Jaeger Program and the world. Beloved pilot Natasha Romanoff sacrificed her life to protect Alaska’s coast in a final battle against Category 2 Bi Fang. Memorials dedicated to Romanoff’s efforts appeared across every nation to lament her death and celebrate her heroism. Yet, somehow, no one seemed to be asking the million-dollar question: Where is her co-pilot? >_

 _< Two days ago, pictures were taken in Hong Kong of James Barnes and a mysterious woman. Our sources here at TVB have worked tirelessly to uncover her identity._>

< _Today we have the pleasure of introducing her to everyone tuning in. This is the first time you’ve ever been in the public eye, and astonishingly, next to two of the best pilots in the Program. There are so many questions, but first, the whole world wants to know…. why keep it secret? >_

The host’s open hand urges your reply.

The lights seem to turn up even brighter. Your back starts sweating. The room is about to collapse. In short, naturally­­— _infuriatingly_ —you choke.

Seven hours of droning like a broken wind up toy, already knowing how to answer this question by heart, prepping yourself for the interrogation, the relentless demand to publicize your grief, to placate the people about your relationship with their heroes—and, you _choke_.

Bucky’s chin tilts microscopically in the corner of your line of vision. _You’re fine,_ he’s saying, _you got it._ He’s strangely calm, even pleased, as you stutter involuntarily. Like he’s the first to remember an inside joke you’d long forgotten, his grin widens the longer you look at him. Steve turns next. _Focus. Don’t fight the drift. The drift is silence_.

And suddenly, your shoulders ease. The static in your exhausted brain slides out of your ears.

You sit up tall. You _smile_. It doesn’t quite feel like _your_ smile, but, it’s a good one. You know this smile; it’s _Steve’s_ smile. Like a seamless assembly, you fall into rhythm.

The white of his teeth slip out from between Steve’s lips. He notices too.

You calmly recite the introductory speech you’d been practicing for the last two hours, feeling out your new voice, borrowing from his bearing—deeper, smoother, certain. The major points get run through: your record and own personality traits keeping you from the spotlight, admitting genuinely that you’re pretty damn uncomfortable now, so they’ll have to forgive you for any slip ups. It goes over well, as Pepper predicted; “candid” blunders made Rangers human—made them likable.

When the subject of Anchorage rolls back around, you can practically feel Steve’s jaw bulging preemptively. You graze his foot with yours as a warning to back off.

_< It’s remarkable that you were able to bring the Jaeger back to shore, there has been only one pilot who was capable of that—>_

“I’m thankful to have had Stacker Pentecost as my mentor. I owe so much of my resilience to him. It was difficult, but simply put, I had no other choice. I feel so lucky to have survived it.”

_< Natasha Romanoff–>_

“She was one of a kind.”

< _Was it hard to— >_

“Yes.”

The host clears his throat, visibly awkward that you’re being so terse, but taking the hint until Bucky turns into the spotlight, that divorced happiness he’s so skilled at beaming into the lenses. 

Steve easily picks it up, steering the conversation where he wants it to go. He’s disarmingly sincere as he relays the process of Bucky’s injury, replacement, apprehension, and finally success

His bright blue eyes flicker secret messages and you decipher them all.

“The connection was like—"

There’s a bell chiming in your ears. Bright, crisp chirps of it, cutting through laughter and bickering. You taste summer air in your throat, Bucky’s hair flying in the wind. “Riding a bike…”

“ _Exactly_. New bike, same motions, and it worked. It was great. We learned things about each other. Some good, some bad—”

Crosshatched pencil lines of their shared apartment. Smudges of charcoal in a sketchbook. “He’s an unbelievable artist, but—”

“ _No_ — don’t say it!”

Bucky smothering a small kitchen fire. Steve throwing a damp rag on him in a frantic attempt to assist. Your voice is bubbling out gleefully.“—an _awful_ cook!”

“It’s true,” Bucky smugly chimes in. “The boy can’t boil water. Breakfast eggs come with shells every time.” You can taste the grit between your molars—crushed grains inside an overdone omelet, Bucky spitting out spinach and feta cheese.

“Oh my god,” you sputter into a sip of champagne. “It’s _so bad_.”

“Do you see what I have to deal with? Two people knowing my secrets. _Two_.”

_< Fantastic! Already we can see a great friendship here—>_

It seems congratulatory, but there’s determination to drive into scandalous territory, poking at any rumor to lance and leak. A sly smile crosses his face as his assistant shows photos of you and Bucky in the city, but the lurid suggestion only gets shrugged off. “We’d gone out for dinner. It was the first time I’d left the Shatterdome after Seigehook and I needed moral support.”

_< The jacket tells a different story.>_

“I’d give _you_ my jacket if you looked cold.”

_< Steve, Ophelia isn’t concerned that your new co-pilot is a woman?>_

“No, absolutely not. ‘Lia’s the first person to support Orion—and the loudest. I don’t know what I’d do without her. You don’t have her behind the curtain, too, do you?”

_< Well, what about personal memories? Won’t you know everything about each other…? Private things?>_

“Sure, but what pair of pilots don’t? You got twins and siblings, not just married couples. Look, here’s the thing: the neural bridge doesn’t take you to a filing cabinet. It’s not open like that. It’s more like—somebody help me—” Bucky snaps his fingers your way, “—what’d you call it the other day?”

You didn’t, but you say, “A dream?”

“Right, a dream. If you think about it, you can pull on it, but if it’s not in the forefront of your mind. It’s a non-issue.”

“We’re all adults here,” Steve confirms.

_< Do you plan for James to return to the cockpit? Is that the goal? James, how do you feel about all of this, taken away from your own Jaeger?>_

Steve’s palm faces outward as if keeping the host at bay— or, you think, keeping _himself_ at bay. “Hold on. This isn’t about replacement. Nobody is framing it like a nail in the coffin—we’re in the interim of a period of time, readjusting. Short of death, nothing is going to take him _away_.”

Sunlight. Recruitment. Ice baths. Training until they had to carry each other to bed. Your eyes flutter, head pilfering through the memories like instinct.

“James is still Orion’s co-pilot.” You agree. Apprehension. Dread. Terror. Confidence in each other even when they didn’t believe in themselves. They were together. Nothing else mattered. “ _Steve’s_ co-pilot.”

The tight look on his face is temporarily wiped as he beams proudly, “He’s my Bucky. Always has been, always will be.” He claps Bucky on the back twice and each thump’s echo bounces its way into your chest.

Bucky bristles and sputters, but a healthy pink dusts its way across his cheeks, “Don’t _embarrass_ me, Rogers.”

“Are you blushing?” You tease, elated.

“Don’t _you_ start, either.”

_< Well… this is very wonderful. Is there a possibility we’ll be seeing a triple-piloted machine? The Tang triplets have been in talks for a new model.>_

Steve shakes his head. “We haven’t discussed it yet. Nothing’s off the table, by any means. Just not priority at the moment.”

< _What is priority at the moment? >_

“Normalcy, as much as we can get in the middle of all this.” Bucky holds out his hand, closing it into a fist, letting the camera zoom in. “We’re… still working through all the kinks, balancing the personal and global.” 

He flexes his fingers, letting the microphones pick up the drone of machinery, but his meaning is another secret. Clicking Morse codes of well-oiled obsidian plates purring two names. You’ve stopped listening to everything but the echo incandescent in your heart.

You down your glass.

-

Champagne tipsy, you try not to stagger through the lobby. The doorman nods toward the limousine parked faithfully by the curb.

The barrage of questions slowed after it became apparent that there would be no sensationalist headline. There was attention to Bucky’s arm, his handsome face, of course, before the banter quickly devolved into entertaining frivolous sidebar queries. Five flutes bubbled down your throat and by the end of it, you no longer wanted to grab camera one and shake the shit out of it, anger whittled down to a dull hum of annoyance.

Thirty million stupid dollars for inane reels of:

 _What’s in your purse? What do you eat?_ _How do you stay feminine in a Shatterdome full of testosterone—have you tried any K-beauty skincare routines? Do you have anyone special in your life?_

Bucky went in, then, leaning forward until he was nearly rocking off and leveled his glare. _You know she’s on the other side of the same robot, buckled up into a ninety-pound rig steering two-hundred tons of—_

It took a miracle (see: Steve’s firm hand discreetly on the back of Bucky’s neck and Pepper drawing a sharp line across her throat) to effectively halt the derailing train.

“I can’t believe,” Bucky grouses now, opening the door and waving the driver back to the front. “Those goddamn questions.” 

“Does wiping my sweaty face with my even sweatier shirt count as skincare? What’s the K stand for?”

Bucky smacks the back of your head with one hand, other clumsily yanking the door open with the other. “For _Korean_ —have you been living under a rock? Just—get in the fuckin’ car.”

You slap him back. “Quit it, you invalid.”

“Invalid? I’ll show you a fuckin’— _Steve_ , did you hear—”

“ _Both_ ofyou, get in the car.”

And you shriek, scrambling in and yanking Bucky along by the scruff of his jacket. Mischief courses beneath your skin, encouraged by clever alcohol, now fully buzzed its way to every extremity.

Still giggling and leaning into the thrill of it, you slump over the smooth plastic molding of the door and press your face against the tinted window. It’s a cool reprieve on your warmed cheek, frosting when your temperature meet the glass. Bucky’s easy Cantonese, albeit slurred, is requesting a ride back to base. His hand has found its way into yours, fingers laced large and warm, clasping tight before he lets go.

“Haven’t had a drink— _oh_ –” you murmur, catching yourself as the wheels shift.

“Since Red Cloud.”

“Outta my head, Rogers.”

“Says the person who kept finishing my sentences during that interview.”

“It’s the champagne! It makes me—“

“Stupid?”

“You’re an _ass_ , Barnes.” But you’re laughing at him, at the way he’s smirking— cheeks gone ruddy. Both of them, open beside each other, heads inclined intuitively together. It makes you ache to see—to experience again after disruption—Rogers and Barnes. Barnes and Rogers. Perfectly fitted.

The partition slides up. The sunroof tugs open with a whistling draft.

Hong Kong’s lights are vivid—too much to properly see the extent of space’s beauty, but there are a few twinkles you’re able to make out in the moonless night as light poles and skyscraper tips whiz overhead. They’re brighter than most, simple to spot patterns in the dark.

“Orion’s out tonight,” you mutter, moving to catch the line of its belt, “Look. Beneath his feet is Lepus, the hare, pursued for all time.” From across, Steve follows, also looking to find their hero as your hair rustles wildly, making a hurricane against your ear.

“Don’t be so fucking dramatic,” Bucky scolds. He’s annoyed and comfortable on leather, ankle crossed over opposite knee. “You’re not being chased by anything. Besides, if you were a constellation, you’d probably be the soup ladle.”

You laugh. He’s always playing the part of a stoic so well. “Hey, I’ll have you know the Little Dipper’s got the north star in it. That soup ladle’s gonna be the thing that gets you home when you’re lost.”

The tone shifts—time dragging its pace as you look at them in wonder. The city’s overripe heaviness of the blows through, making goosebumps on heated skin.

“Buck,” Steve says, and Bucky slips his jacket from his shoulders to slide over yours. He tugs the lapels down like he’s trying to keep you on earth and your hands clasp on his wrists for a second before you let go. They’re both sitting up now, watching your bleary gaze unfocus.

Steve and Bucky oscillate in front of your eyes, their lines blurring until it doesn’t really matter who you’re looking at—until they become one. So easy, like this, just them like two sides of the same coin, belonging so seamlessly to each other.

“Sorry,” you blurt in shame, “I feel like I fucked it up. Ruined a thing that wasn’t mine to ruin.”

“Think you put it together,” Steve responds quietly, and the simplicity of his statement throws you off. “We found our way.”

“Soup ladle,” Bucky jokes.

“But, aren’t we just trading one war for another? World peace only made it because of monsters.” Unspoken questions hidden inside large-scale metaphors— symbiosis could only be achieved under the lies of other relationships. Whatever _this_ would be, it wouldn’t be accepted. Steve still retains his supermodel girlfriend and you and Bucky dutifully fall in line for your own packaged little PR lies.

He shrugs. “I’m fine with losing a few battles in this war, but Orion’s got a good track record, doesn’t it, Buck?”

“Twelve— _thirteen_ kills, sweetheart.” Bucky’s grin is lopsided. “Don’t forget you made that happen.”

“Thirteen’s an unlucky number.”

“Feels lucky to me.” Steve’s hand wraps around your wrist, thumb resting on your pulse. He taps your skin, looking genuinely apologetic. “Listen, all I can do is ask— and I’m not good at asking for things. I just want to make them happen.” A quick glance at the watch under his cuffs and he tugs at your arm like a lost child, “So, before we get back… will you come here?”

As he said, he’s not really asking. More like reaching his will out to you, finding you when you’re caught in the undertow and pulling you back to safety. To them. _Okay. Okay._

Your footing slips, but they take your hands and turn you carefully, letting you settle in between. Bucky hums a low sound, fingers curling around your waist. Steve does the same to the opposite side and you feel both torn apart and held together by them.

Steve nuzzles your neck, hot on your skin.

“She was wrong,” he whispers, barely audible over the sound of your rising breath, “You know that? She was wrong, and I was wrong. I thought it couldn’t happen—thought I had other priorities, other things to manage and settle and save and… I lost sight of what matters most. But I’m gonna really fix it this time—I’m gonna do it right by you.” 

He looks to Bucky, pained and relieved, “Both of you, I promise.” He takes Bucky’s hand in his own and holds it to his mouth, kissing his knuckles, his palm, saying softly, “I love you, Buck. I’m sorry you waited so long.”

“Hey stupid,” Bucky says shakily when your chin starts to quiver at the sight of them. He’s sniffling and swallowing his syllables, unable to stop himself from staring at Steve’s face in his hand, how Steve kisses the blue pulse in his wrist. “Ain’t you—too pretty to cry?”

The rocking of the car flattens out as Steve gently presses his lips to yours, letting the trail of salt bursting down your cheek into his mouth. He moves to the line of your jaw, promising,

_It’s okay. I got you. Nothing’s gonna hurt you anymore._

They kiss you and the world turns itself right.

They kiss you and then they kiss each other. Again and again and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this update took so long! I spent four months completely overthinking it. Ugh :((( Thank you for reading, I appreciate you all *so* much!


	5. Epoch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The drift manifests in its silence and its steady flow. The path of their lives woven together and you’re another stitch added to the fabric of their tapestry. No use fighting it now; you know them. You’ll know them tomorrow. You’ll know them at the end of the world.

Steve’s been struggling since the limo. 

The car ride wasn’t enough by any measure. A lot of staring and mostly trying not to do too much or get too excited. Black out windows only meant privacy from those outside, and then the driver was an entirely different problem a flimsy partition couldn’t fix.

He burns through the entrance bay, curtly greeting anyone who chances a look his way and dodging every possible conversation. Volatile energy and the desperate need to have something in his hands, his fist closes beneath Bucky’s jacket, crumpling the shirt above the small of his back, guiding him towards the room.

He finally lets Bucky go with a tight “in”, nudging him past the door and pulling on you after, gesturing somewhere that’s not quite the bed, but near enough to make his point.

“This okay?” Bucky suddenly asks between the first and second button of his shirt, huge eyes concerned and peering at you. “This too much?”

“Sort of,” you reply, breathless at the sight of his skin beneath the collar. “You?”

“Sort of. Steve?”

Steve doesn’t respond with anything but seizing Bucky by the jaw and planting another one on him, then rucking the opened lines of fabric down to his forearms.

“Hell,” Bucky laughs weakly before conceding and losing the rest, a small blush climbing up his throat and cheeks. He shifts timidly under Steve’s ogling, and you’re no better. 

Bucky’s gorgeous, of course he is— lightly tanned torso, the strong lines of his muscles, even the scar tissue, vibrantly angry from the tinge of alcohol, looks like a gift ribbon.

“Pants, Buck,” Steve demands petulantly, hungry and impatient now that he’s gotten down to brass tacks, everything he’s tried to withhold from the world and himself strewn about and catching fire.

It’s the most wonderful thing— how he’s not a half-god at all; he’s not even close. He’s— so simply human. Greedy, jealous, excitable, fallible, simple. Human.

“You’re a fantastic mess, Steve,” you confirm affectionately.

He certainly looks it, blonde head in clumps of tangled hair, his cheeks, lips, nose all rosy pink. Sweet.

“I know,” he grins, and it could light up the Shatterdome. He touches the tender skin beneath your eyelids. “Not gonna cry again, are you?”

Bucky recalls a recent event of you hanging on his arm and sobbing. “You’re a real crybaby,” he adds, “Never would have guessed until last night.”

“ _Both_ of you, shut up.”

They happily do, smirking, looking at each other, hands inching closer until you’re chained like devotees in a prayer circle with the poor, tiny fucking bed as the smallest possible altar.

“Yes ma’am,” Bucky leans forward, brushing his cheek against yours, the bristles of his groomed beard tenderly scraping your face. He does it to the other side like a kitten lovingly marking its territory before his lips follow, sealing heat inside your skin.

Now that you’re out of a lurching vehicle and your grief-stricken head, he gives it to you long and sweet. He kisses you warm, gentle, effortless— like he’s dreamed it—like he’s done it all his life.

“Buck,” Steve murmurs on your shoulder, needing faster contact. “Bucky,” he says again, firmer. He gets his fist in Bucky’s hair, pulling hard, and like Steve’s tuned him to the right frequency, Bucky’s pupils blow into black holes.

He moves highspeed, shucking your shirt from your torso, hurling it far like a detonating bomb. His jeans come off next, Steve’s boxers after. The drift’s connection materializes into tangible experience, humming of dripping sweat and lover’s spit, the heady smell of sex and the attentive manner in which they handle you, starved for more of everything.

You give it all up.

It’s both too fast and not fast enough, like the last step of a sprint just before the finish line-- adrenaline and instinct pushing through your veins to get _there_ while the three of you fumble blindly, knocking into each other in efforts to _feel_.

Between frantic undressing and literally between them, you attempt to catch your breath. Head resting on Bucky’s shoulder, shoulder blades braced on his chest, you adjust in his grasp until you’re kneeling, and he starts tonguing the nape of your neck, scraping the first notch of your vertebrae with his teeth.

You feel the strength of Steve’s biceps, arching when Bucky reaches the middle of your spine. He traces the curve of your throat and collarbone, palms cupping your breasts, your ribcage, the soft curve of your waist, parting your thighs.

“Fuck, I’m hard,” Steve groans at the sight of you panting, of Bucky working you up, aroused and stooping to show you exactly _how_ hard. And you _knew_ _—_ felt it last night beneath his sweats, but seeing it now, ramrod straight and _pulsing_ on your pelvis, shiny with precome— 

“Me too,” admits Bucky, and it effectively turns you into a trembling disarray.

They’re fire hot when they slip between your legs. Thick, smooth velvet skin on skin, rubbing against each other, dragging damp stripes where they touch you. Words aren’t necessary but they speak everything on their minds like they can’t help it. Like a lifetime of curbed yearning has finally had enough of silencing itself.

Bucky’s vocabulary condenses to mere cursing whileSteve’s a rushing torrent of praise. An entire waterfall of _you look amazing, you feel so-fucking-amazing, stay just like that—_ your name and Bucky’s name exchanged rhythmically like verses of his favorite song.

You clench up each time his cockhead barely dips in, or when Bucky grinds against your clit, writhing for more friction, for someone to hurry up and put you out of your misery. 

Urgency makes you impatient, but knowing how you like a bit of teasing, and then an achingly good and slow slide home, Steve takes the lead until he’s buried, transfixed on your expression as he fucks his way in. 

It’s a splendid new face between pleasure and agony and he must be making it too because he’s never felt anything like this. You’re perfect on his cock—perfectly wet, perfectly fitted, moaning the sweetest melody. Then, Bucky replaces him after a beat, and the room arcs like electricity and pure energy.

“How’s— this?” Bucky asks, sounding just as wrecked as you feel, “Too much? Or— do you want more?” You short circuit, words tangled in your swimming vision, coming out as frail puffs of air.

“More,” Steve replies in your stead, thrusting with urgency. “Faster.”

“Faster?” Bucky checks, “I can do faster.” He picks up speed. “Harder, too.” He uses you as leverage, fingers curling hard over your hipbones. He says things like “Jesus,” and “fuck”, like he’s not the one sending you reeling out of your body— like he’s not the one making Steve crazy, either.

Steve isn’t letting Bucky take all the credit, however. He’s a fast learner, and soon enough they’re taking turns like a well-oiled machine, bottoming out each time, racing each other to be back inside, drinking in the way you tailspin into pleasure. 

There’s a chaotic sort of communication as Steve keeps demanding for Bucky to stay close, for you to hold on, and—your heart skips when he begs to feel both of you—for both of them _inside_ at the same time.

“Yeah?” He asks, doe-eyed. As if you could say no to him. Of course, you want it. _Christ_ , you want it, need it, you’d die for it.

“Yeah,” Steve says knowingly, “Okay,” and attempts a clumsy, mildly restrained guidance before overzealous fingers take control.

His golden hair is damp at the roots, wild as he sucks his fingers into his mouth. Then, he presses them to where Bucky’s rutting inside of you, feeling your stretched hole dripping down Bucky’s shaft.

One sinks in gently and Bucky hisses in your ear. You search for something to do, finally settling for reaching backwards and clasping your hands at the base of his skull. “ _Fuck_ ,” he rasps out. Enthralled with how you squirm and pant, a tone of reverence overtakes him. “Jesus, that’s— _fuck_ , you _really_ like this."

Steve ducks down and licks up, spitting into his palm, working with determination until one becomes two and you and Bucky start shivering. He gets to three and you swear you’ve died and are just being marionetted by his fucking _hand_. Full already but his clever fingers keep twisting until he’s got enough room to stroke against Bucky, too.

“St-Steve,” you say. “My— god, it feels— ”

“It’s okay,” he replies, grazing Bucky to slow him, “Gotta work you up to it, gotta make it good for you.” He runs his tongue up the column of Bucky’s cock, making him jerk and bite your shoulder. Steve licks faster, harder, until he’s slanted and putting as much as he can between his lips. Then he _sucks_ hard, loud, makes his way up to your clit, and it’s _unbelievable._

He stays there a while more, listening to you and Bucky whimper before he ambles up, glossy and wet across his cheek, kissing you, kissing Bucky, and then he’s doing it—his dick, hot, wet with fresh precome and your own juices—missing once, twice, then—

“ _Oh_ —” you stutter in disbelief, airy light and clawing at him for anchor. His cockhead pushes behind Bucky’s shaft, slips its way up next, and then he’s driving himself inside of you like he’s always belonged there.

It’s a fever like rapture— passion like violence. Your atoms are splitting apart; you hardly even feel real. They hold onto you, fingers laced together, saying the same words, moving the same ways. When Steve kisses Bucky, you feel it, too, a tenderness in the pit of your heart. When Steve kisses you, Bucky makes the most gorgeous sound.

They’re everywhere and you’re jammed full of them, surrendered and claimed. Beautiful, enormous, rocking and opening you until they fit entirely, creating a fantastic and sore ache you’ve never experienced before. The noises they make plunging in and out are wet and filthy, so raw and sweet, and you won’t— _can’t_ — last like this.

“You’re _tight_ , sweetheart. So _tight_.” Bucky’s got the right idea when he mutters, “Fuck _,_ Steve— _easy_.”

“Can’t—” his hips continue rolling, “‘S too good…” He’s kissing you sloppy, thighs constricting when he moves his hand to your ass and lower, holding the base of Bucky’s cock alongside his, eyes unfocused in pleasure and begging for more.

You could stay here forever, unraveled just like this, with them sunken so deep they’re your bones and blood, building you back up into something resplendent and new. Even though you’re pushed to near weeping, gnawing on your lip, only upright because they’re holding you so. 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

More. More. More.

God _damn_ it.

You burst apart without warning, smothering cries into sweat slick skin, and come shaking in their arms. Bucky’s wrapping himself over your back, grunting as they keep finding new ways to touch each other. Light slaps, hard grasps, Bucky’s thumb on the inside of Steve’s cheek, dragging his spit all over your nipples.

It doesn’t stop. It feels like one long orgasm that won’t ever end until they do. Your insides are fluttering madly, squeezing muscle and gushing wet slick.

Bucky edges closer and closer.

Steve takes a chunk of his hair again and he’s done for, pistoning in uneven motions, coming hard and loud before it turns faint, slowing his pace until it’s a mere lazy rubbing like habit, dripping down your thighs and between your knees.

“Buck,” Steve says in awe, fingers stroking the mess, “Buck… there’s so much— _oh_ …” He catches it on his knuckles and brings it to his tongue like holy wine. Another hot catalyst for a new burst of momentum and he gasps, dick flexing before he shatters too, quivering through aftershocks with Bucky’s taste still in his mouth.

“Holy shit,” he says after another slow lick. “Holy shit…”

It’s mutual astonishment. You and Bucky gaze at him— his face bloomed open, red like a blossom, his lips, plump and shiny, his eyes slipping shut, breathing steady and satisfied.

It’s bliss. It’s filthy goddamn bliss.

-

“Let’s go shower,” he suggests later, when your legs stop feeling like jelly and they’ve somewhat cleaned up with the nearest dampened towel, “I don’t care if someone sees us.”

“Yes you do,” Bucky candidly responds. The three of you are propped up on the cold wall, a relief for blistering skins. Still sore from the fight, you realize it now that you’re not concerned with being screwed into the next century, endorphins settling to their regular levels and the pained places across your body has one more tacked on. Your roll your shoulder against the metal, groaning.

Steve kneads it carefully, thumbs working tired muscle as he argues, “No, I don’t. It’s the end of the damn world. Whatever we do for the public is out _there_ , not here. _Here_ , I’ve got you, and you, and… that’s all I care about.”

You know he’ll have more reason in a couple of hours, but he can’t be persuaded now. You move so he can get a spot by your side.

“We could die next week,” he continues, “I want to wash off. I can’t reach the middle of my back and I’ve been waiting for a good reason to shower with someone who can do it for me— and now I have _two_.”

Bucky snorts. “I could have done that for you anytime, idiot. Literally just ask.”

“ _No_. You _couldn_ _’_ _t_ have. I wouldn’t have been… wouldn’t have been able to function.”

Bucky whistles low and sly, “Whoo… _horndog_. How’d you make it all these years, huh? Thinkin’ bout my perky ass all lathered up.”

You pat Steve’s face, feeling his embarrassment, glad it’s finally resolved how it has. All those subdued emotions compartmentalized so austerely until he nearly convinced himself it was true. That loving could remain platonic and sterile, uncomplicated because he refused to complicate it. The sheer willpower of one, stupid, wonderful man.

A familiar sting rises in the back of your throat.

You’re thinking too much about the shower, about your own willpower and the hazards of love. Still naked with your hand on Bucky’s knee, his leg over your thigh, a second too long and you feel it— Natasha curled down so small at the bottom of the tiled corner, looking at nothing. Then looking at you, and you knew she wished you could have been nothing, too.

Ah, shit. Why now, out of all the times. Freshly fucked and not even recovered from it, buzzing all over, adored by two whom you also adore—and yet your brain still leads itself to her.

Bucky makes a move to console and scold, but Steve stops him with a question that speaks more like a declaration. He says, “You know why I had Fury pick you up?”

You sober at his blunt change in tone.

“I knew Natasha... met her lots of times and when the news broke about Anchorage, I figured her co-pilot’s gonna put the world through hell and back again for her. Gonna tear herself apart doing it because I would have.”

He goes quiet, his voice coming out small and pained, staring at his feet in contemplation. “But you didn’t. You just... fucked off. You protected yourself and you stayed safe, that’s why. I didn’t need another self-sacrificing hero—there were already two of us. You understand? I needed someone about their shit, who was going to look out for herself, and who was going to make me do the same.”

“I’m not calling you selfish,” he clarifies, “I’m calling you _certain_. I was falling apart, and I needed certainty. Six kills sure helped, but I would have taken you for a lot less. I knew it was right after we drifted. Knew everything about you then.”

“Sorry I told you I was gonna dig your corpse outta the ocean.” Bucky rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, impish, “I was falling apart, too.”

You trace the rugged seam of his prosthetic, gently brushing puckered scar tissue. “Yeah, well. You _literally_ were.”

“Speaking of… how… are you doing? You know… Your—” he tilts his head toward your groin, nose scrunching up nervously, “Y’know.” You and Steve break out into fits of laughter, leaning into one another. Oh, Bucky. He’s got a lot to learn.

“I’m tough,” you reply with a wink, “Remember those stories that’ll put hairs on your chest?”

“Alright, shut up anytime. Now’s fine.” Bucky crosses his arms and promises, “You know what, next time we do this, I’m gonna rail you _so_ hard.”

“Good luck,” Steve grins.

Levity subsides soon enough, languid silence coming to roost as they take each of your hands and the three of you listen to each other’s exhaustion. It’s way past bedtime now and you’ll have to wake in just a couple of hours to make it to breakfast. Your fatigue remembers the sleep it’s been short on, the wholesome rest you haven’t had in quite a while.

On your right, Steve blows a lock of hair from his forehead, looking up to the ceiling, “Jesus,” he mutters knowingly, “The last two days… you could write a novel.”

“Started so simple,” Bucky laments, yawning, “Char siu at The Jade Palace.”

“… Then we caught by the pap,” you follow, re-tracing your steps, head lolling onto his shoulder.

“You cried.”

“You kissed me…”

He nods along. “Steve fucked a model,” and Steve claps his hands over his face. “Let’s focus on the important things,” he deflects, “we killed a Kaiju.”

“Then Steve fucked _you_ ,” Bucky effectively ignores him, and it’s your turn to clap your hand over your face. It’s an even weirder round of pillow talk than the last, excavating the 48 hours. “We didn’t… _fuck_ … we just… anyway, then _you_ cried,” and Bucky makes a face of mock betrayal.

“Fury blackmailed all of us and now we’ll probably be trending for the next week.”

“And then Steve fucked _again_ ,” Bucky chimes at last, a little too eager like he’s saved the jab just for Steve. His smile is lopsided and shit-eating. Yeah, he definitely saved that one.

“ _Lots_ of fucking on your part, Stevie.”

“This is the worst…” Steve groans loudly.

“Is it?” Bucky’s foot grazes yours, knobby ankle bumping your leg. The three of you turn mute, letting peace settle again over that tiny bed and its damp covers smeared with new love. You pull the sheet up to your chest, huddling beneath flimsy cotton and nuzzle further into Bucky. Steve does the same, curving over you like a shield.

You think about the color red for Natasha’s hair. Her lips, the way she looked ripped through and torn from you, and how Bucky’s bandages seeped the same shade the first day you met. You think about the neon signs of Hong Kong, arrows pointing down dusky streets and lanterns swinging in the breeze. The call of evening cyphers as you followed him into the city.

You think about Steve’s chest heaving with anticipation, breaking out into that ruddy blush when he kissed you. About fire and devotion. About the bright burn in your core when they made you theirs. Even before tonight, maybe you’d been theirs for a while now and just hadn’t realized it.

The drift manifests in its silence and its steady flow, the path of their lives woven together and you’re another stitch added to the fabric of their tapestry. No use fighting it now; you know them. You’ll know them tomorrow. You’ll know them at the end of the world.

She’s fading. You want to hold her. You want to tell her so much. About everything that’s happened since she left. She’d be happy, wouldn’t she? You’re moving on, aren’t you?

A light touch collects your attention. Steve maps the edge of your hairline, to your eyebrow, to your cheek. He runs a path down to your jaw, smudging a tear you didn’t know had streamed out. 

“This is _good_ ,” he says fondly.

You etch them inside your heart, write them in the stars. Barnes and Rogers, Rogers and Barnes. Perfectly fitted.

“Yeah,” you sigh, “It’s good.”

-

It happens 4 months later on a leap day.

Strange fate on a stranger morning, and a staggering rush of déjà vu darts through you when the broadcast hits the mess hall at breakfast. The egg clinging to your spoon plops onto the table and Steve stops in the middle of chewing when he notices your concern.

“You okay?”

Bucky swallows a bite of toast, following your gaze sharply when someone whistles for louder volume on the TV.

The newscaster is heavily pelted with rain in the middle of Bristol Bay, yelling over the storm, trying to flinch as little as possible while the torrent beats down.

It’s much too close for comfort— just on the other side of the Aleutian Range. Some odd hours of walking in a Jaeger and it could be you, plummeting out of Decima to fall headfirst into sand and tears.

“The Category III, codenamed Knifehead, emerged this morning around 2. Anchorage pilots Yancy and Raleigh Becket were deployed in Gipsy Danger—” she cuts out for a second, crackling, “—we have confirmation now that the crew of a small fishing boat, after being pushed to safety by Gipsy, witnessed—”

He realizes too late when your face twist in anguish, connecting dots to the final picture: a storm in Anchorage, one drop and two kills, the Jaeger gone missing and reappearing on the coast a couple of hours later with only one pilot crawling out.

“Turn it down!” Bucky hollers before someone angrily throws the remote at him and his thumb goes sheet white forcing itself on the volume. You graze his shoulder gently, shaking your head.

“I’m okay, don’t worry.”

It hurts like hell and you’re visibly upset, but it’s not like you can afford to be hung up on every pilot death; they’re happening more lately than ever. The Jaeger Program’s triumphed to new heights, but you feel like the plateau’s in sight now, and that eventually you’ll be looking at the edge of a steep fall.

The marshal’s revealed more about the wall to you in confidence—construction planned for the end of 2020, the program slowly leeched until its termination only five years later. Yet now as you watch the camera panning out, precarious grip faltering inside a helicopter lashed with ocean wind, you know the first brick’s already been laid. It’s only February. It’s too early.

But pilots keep dying and Kaiju keep breaching. The PPDC must be taking steps.

“You think he’ll be alright?” Steve asks, “The Becket kid?”

They were deployed in 2017 after you left, so you’ve only heard of the brothers through media and rumor. Their story seemed standard issue as far as most pilots go, male ones particularly. The boys were young and rowdy. Skilled fighters, too. They’ve dropped at least one Category IV in a joint effort from what you recall.

“Dunno,” you say honestly, “I hope so.”

“You turned out alright,” Bucky says.

“I did.”

He contemplates the running marquee and rapidly appearing subtitles, Knifehead’s stats splayed there, red letters marking its early appearance as another strike to the increasing public panic. But the truth is, sometimes panic is necessary. Sometimes panic makes you vigilant. You hope that’s the case in 2025 when the wall goes up; you hope the living will fight back.

“They’re coming up stronger, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.”

He leans over to kiss you even though he’s supposed to be careful— Shatterdome’s full of eyes— but the table doesn’t spare his affection the slightest glance, used to it by now.

It’s not much of a secret after the last few months anyway, the return of Steve’s post-orgasm brain night after night making sure of that. He’s lobbed every single one of his fucks out the window, walking around with his arm around Bucky’s shoulder, hardly bothering to hide. How many times did poor Sam walk in on you changing in the men’s shower again? Steve’s bare ass strutting about— once, pinning you against a wall, riled up for round 2 or 3. 

_Lots_ of fucking on Steve’s part, just like Bucky said.

Thankfully, the compound’s airtight. Fury’s grip is ironclad; no information goes in or out without his acute privy, and he’s announced more than once he’d trace any back to the source and that being a TMZ informant better be worth getting fired, blacklisted from working in Hong Kong, and having the burden of adding another reason to the downfall of the Program.

Orion’s not the first set of pilots to enter a relationship, nor is it the first secret the dome’s kept.

So _Men_ _’_ _s Health_ continues featuring Steve on its covers, Bucky’s juggles a new reputation of being some kind of playboy along with a very publicized on-off relationship, and promoters keeps calling Pepper asking if you and Wanda are interested in sponsoring their nightclub.

She doesn’t even bother anymore, not after you volunteered to host your own DIY Youtube channel on how to erase dental records from police database. You retain the special privilege of engaging in events of your choosing simply because Pepper doesn’t want anybody educated on how to safely char their fingerprints off. Hah.

“Hill’s gonna make me eat a towel if I’m late,” Bucky says quickly, checking his phone. “Meet you for dinner?”

“Erik and I are going to the Children’s Hospital and reading books to the kids, I don’t think we’ll fight back through traffic in time.”

“Killmonger?” Bucky looks offended. “He’s all hands.”

You peek over a few heads, waving for Erik’s attention, “You all hands?”

“Why? Your man wanna catch ‘em?” He calls back without missing a beat, and Bucky frowns dramatically, mouthing _I hate you_ before tilting his chin at Erik in apology. He’s gonna hand Bucky’s ass to him next basketball game because Bucky’s a lot of things, but he’s not even Sporty _Spice_ , much less sporty, period. You shoot 3’s in your _sleep_ better than he can.

It’s fun, getting to know all the things about him you didn’t see through Steve’s eyes.

“Get going, Buck,” Steve urges, then telling you “Don’t tease him,” when Bucky pouts his way out of sight.

You take his empty tray with a laugh and stack it over yours, standing up to dump them with Steve, and knocking elbows with Pietro in greeting. You playfully dodge deliberate looks from friends-- twinkly smiles and eyes at Steve waiting for you by the doorway.

“I’m really glad he likes flying.”

“I’m just glad Maria hasn’t snapped him in half.”

“ _Yet_ ,” you correct, but you know it’s the right fit. Maria’s stern and capable, and Bucky’s done a tour of positions around the Shatterdome and liked being on the jumphawk crew best. He’s a science nerd through and through, but cross-referencing plots of data with Banner made him antsy and he simply can _not_ handle Tony.

He’d given up on piloting, announcing plainly one afternoon. His arm’s too much of a liability, and no matter how advanced the technology is, Shuri can’t say with 100% conviction that it won’t possibly interfere with the neural handshake in the middle of a crucial moment. It’d be going through two walls of brain signal—another layer to break and a chance Bucky wouldn’t risk.

No skin off his back. Orion’s got you, after all. The world is moving on, and he’s just doing the same. Things to do, jobs to complete. Might as well make himself useful because everyone else is.

As long as he was happy and sure, it wasn’t anyone’s place to convince him otherwise.

Footsteps are echoing down the hall, carts rolling noisily, at least one wheel on each violently spinning out of tempo. Forklifts blare reverse alarms, their drivers backing up to drop palettes into stacks. Bucky’s got three minutes before Maria kneecaps him, and you’re signed on for a couple hours in the simulation machine to train with Steve.

“Don’t be too long,” he says, nudging the door open and walking through, “Or else Thor’s gonna steal our window again, the shitheel.” He jogs ahead, picking up speed when he peeks Thor sauntering in the same direction, yelling, “No you don’t!”

You maintain your pace despite his rush, turning the wide corner and saying hello here and there with brief bits of Cantonese, mindful of your inflection lest you want to accidentally use the wrong word. You’ve learned a hundred new names and faces and know their schedules well enough to find where they are most times of the day through all kinds of chaos.

The Shatterdome’s a damn madhouse at 5:25 in the morning and the thought soothes you that it’ll stay that way to the very end: working, tireless, committed, and you will too. It’s lovely comfort, surrounded by two thousand people on the same mission-- two thousand you’re proud to say are becoming your family.

A few more steps and you arrive at your destination, having walked this detour for months.

At the front of the entrance bay, the war clock faithfully continues its tally, that awful click keeping pace toward the next critical event. You don’t know when it might be your last time seeing those numbers, so you’ve made a habit to stop each morning, silently asking for another day even though chances are you might not even outlive this one.

It’s how these things go, you’re well aware.

_No more loss. Keep us safe. Let me stay. Even if it_ _’_ _s futile, it_ _’_ _s home with them. It_ _’_ _s good, with them._

You watch the flaps cycle for a few seconds more.

Then you move on, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s finished!! I’ll be screaming for the next 30 years about it!! Thank you so much for reading, I couldn’t have done it without your encouragement :’) I'm truly so, so proud of getting to the end.

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by two works on AO3: "Gnosis" by iimpavid (https://archiveofourown.org/works/12624789) and "drift compatible" by synapses (https://archiveofourown.org/works/18811327/chapters/44635579).  
> Please check them out!


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